Jürgen Greil comments on the May 2023 edition of the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Aerospace magazine, Part 1

Fly­Now Avi­a­tion CEO Jur­gen Greil writes that Michael Hal­a­by from the Roy­al Aero­nau­ti­cal Soci­ety describes in an arti­cle pub­lished in Aero­space mag­a­zine some of the most chal­leng­ing prob­lems eVTOLs face to meet sug­gest­ed require­ments and his con­clu­sions are all more than viable.

As an expert in the avi­a­tion indus­try for many decades he knows the pain points and issues the indus­try has been try­ing to tack­le since the begin­ning of com­mer­cial flight. The appli­ca­tions for a first suc­cess does not mean that afford­able and avail­able air taxis are not also pos­si­ble if cer­tain require­ments are ful­filled and assump­tions based on exist­ing con­straints are altered.

The main pur­pose of eVTOL will be to sub­sti­tute ground trans­porta­tion sys­tems, most­ly cars. The cars, bus­es and trains pow­ered elec­tri­cal­ly how­ev­er, are also sus­cep­ti­ble to get­ting stuck in traf­fic jams as their con­ven­tion­al coun­ter­parts since they are depen­dent on the same infra­struc­ture.

In addi­tion, it is impor­tant to note that pro­duc­ing elec­tric alter­nate vehi­cles need the same num­ber of resources (or even more) to pro­duce them. In gen­er­al ground infra­struc­ture is not only very expen­sive to build and main­tain, but also seals the ground with all the result­ing prob­lems and addi­tion­al costs.

The auto­mo­tive indus­try is the only form of mobil­i­ty whose total ecosys­tem is mak­ing mon­ey and in com­par­i­son, exist­ing sea, air and rail trans­port sys­tems are not sub­sidised, which means that nei­ther inter­est is paid nor is there any repay­ment.

It is impor­tant to under­stand that exclu­sive car brands, despite their high prices, usu­al­ly earn no or less mon­ey com­pared to vol­ume mod­els, which cross-sub­sidise them with­in a group.

But this was not always the case. In the dawn of the auto­mo­tive indus­try, cars were extreme­ly expen­sive and only a cho­sen few were able to afford them and will­ing to risk their lives to dri­ve them. Among oth­ers it was Ford with the Mod­el T and Volk­swa­gen with the Bee­tle who reduced pro­duc­tion cost by indus­tri­al­is­ing so that the aver­age per­son could afford them.

This also set the gov­ern­ments to invest in the con­struc­tion of the nec­es­sary infra­struc­ture since they had the sup­port from the tax-pay­ing pop­u­la­tion. Fly­Now Avi­a­tion is clear­ly posi­tion­ing itself in the vol­ume seg­ment of the avi­a­tion indus­try.