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eVTOLs — Big in Japan?

aerosociety.com has pub­lished a fas­ci­nat­ing fea­ture enti­tled ‘eVTOLs — Set to be Big in Japan?’ Jour­nal­ist Stephen Bridge­wa­ter, attend­ed the recent Inter­na­tion­al Coun­cil of Aero­nau­ti­cal Soci­eties Emerg­ing Tech­nolo­gies Forum in Kyoto, Japan, where the theme was ‘Future Air Mobil­i­ty Bar­ri­ers and Enablers.’

Such forums and dis­cus­sion groups AKA con­gress­es, occur approx­i­mate­ly every two years attract­ing pro­fes­sion­al soci­eties from 27 nations. Asso­ciate mem­bers include Rolls-Royce, Air­bus, Boe­ing, Embraer and Lock­heed Mar­tin. Some might sug­gest it is a Bilder­berg Group equiv­a­lent for the avi­a­tion indus­try.

The Con­gress was set up in 1956 when Amer­i­can indus­tri­al­ist and phil­an­thropist, Har­ry Guggen­heim, donat­ed a large sum of mon­ey to the Insti­tute of Aero­nau­ti­cal Sci­ences to sup­port a pro­gram of inter­na­tion­al co-oper­a­tion in the field. He expressed a wish that his fund­ing should be used “with a pio­neer­ing intent” and that “we should be look­ing ahead 100 years, not just on a short term basis.”

The Con­gress focused on Japan this year, eye­ing it as an excel­lent poten­tial exam­ple of the future of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM).

L‑R: Lil­li­um CTO Alas­tair McIn­tosh with ICAS Pres­i­dent Dim­itri Mavris, Chair Pro­gramme Com­mit­tee Chris Atkin and JAXA Asso­ciate Senior Researcher Adri­ana Andree­va-Mori PhD at the ICAS ETF Forum. (Stephen Bridgewater/RAeS)

Bridge­wa­ter writes, “If ever there was a coun­try tai­lor-made for UAM, it must sure­ly be Japan. An esti­mat­ed 92 per­cent of the total pop­u­la­tion lives in cities and with more than 38 mil­lion res­i­dents, the Greater Tokyo area is the biggest met­ro­pol­i­tan area in the world.”

He con­tin­ues, “With such urban sprawl and high pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty, it will prob­a­bly be of no sur­prise to hear that traf­fic con­ges­tion is a major prob­lem in Japan. In fact, the aver­age speed on gen­er­al roads (excus­ing express­ways) in the Greater Tokyo are is just 9.75mph! Else­where in Japan, oth­er urban areas, such as Osa­ka and Nagoya, have sim­i­lar­ly low aver­age speeds with a nation­al aver­age of just 22.5mph.”

The jour­nal­ist goes on to say the dis­cus­sions were “live­ly”, where Karolin Schweiger from the Ger­man DLA explained that research sug­gests by 2035, around 23,000 UAM/eVTOLS could be serv­ing a glob­al mar­ket worth some EUR60 bil­lion. Those from the indus­try also speak­ing includ­ed Tom Per­ot, Joby Aviation’s Prod­uct Lead and Alas­tair Mac­in­tosh, CTO at Lil­i­um. 

The fea­ture points out that a major rea­son for hold­ing this year’s Con­gress in Japan is because of the Osa­ka Expo tak­ing place in 2025, where eVTOLs will play a major role. 

Tens of mil­lions of vis­i­tors will descend on the Osa­ka Expo in 2025, where Japan aims to show­case elec­tric air taxis. (Cred­it: Expo 2025 Osa­ka)

After men­tion­ing the effi­cien­cy of Japan’s pub­lic trans­port using the Bul­let train as a good exam­ple, Bridge­wa­ter con­cludes, “If the nation can achieve sim­i­lar lev­els of traf­fic man­age­ment and safe­ty in the air, the eVTOL rev­o­lu­tion could very much be Big in Japan.”

This fea­ture is well worth a read.

https://www.aerosociety.com/news/evtols-set-to-be-big-in-japan/

(Top image: The aver­age speed on roads in the Greater Tokyo area is less than 10mph. Could eVTOLs such as those from Japan­ese com­pa­ny Sky­drive quick­ly and effi­cient­ly trans­port pas­sen­gers from the out­skirts of the city to the rail­way sta­tions that cater for long-dis­tance trav­el? (Cred­it: Sky­drive))

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