BLOG: Air taxis are not a distant vision of the future; they will be here sooner than you think

They were some­thing many of us dreamed of, but the thought of ‘air taxis’ tak­ing over the skies of the world’s busiest cities could be a com­mer­cial­ly viable option as ear­ly as 2023. 

An influx of new tech­nolo­gies such as drones, effi­cient bat­ter­ies and 3D print­ing have all con­tributed to the devel­op­ment of all-elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (eVTOL) air­crafts. With com­mer­cial drones hav­ing already been tried and test­ed effec­tive­ly, the move to autonomous air taxis was sure­ly going to be the next log­i­cal step.

The urban air mobil­i­ty mar­ket is esti­mat­ed to be worth $1.5 tril­lion by 2040, accord­ing to a Mor­gan Stan­ley Research Study, so it’s no won­der ven­ture-backed start-ups and major auto­mo­tive and avi­a­tion brands such as Boe­ing, Hyundai and Toy­ota are all rush­ing to get an ear­ly foothold.

In Jan­u­ary 2020, Hyundai announced a part­ner­ship with Uber and its Ele­vate ser­vice at the Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show in Las Vegas, which will see it devel­op and man­u­fac­ture Uber Air Taxis for a future aer­i­al ride share net­work. 

Hyundai unveiled its full-scale pro­to­type — the SA‑1 — at the show, which can seat up to four pas­sen­gers with a pilot, and will even­tu­al­ly become autonomous. The air­craft can trav­el up to 60 miles (100km) at a top speed of 180 mph, reach­ing an alti­tude of 2,000ft. 

Uber wants to begin test­ing the eVTOL air­craft lat­er this year — with ini­tial ser­vices to be rolled-out in Dal­las, Los Ange­les and Mel­bourne by 2023.

Toy­ota sig­nalled its intent with a $394 mil­lion invest­ment in Sil­i­con Val­ley-based start-up Joby Avi­a­tion, which is also devel­op­ing an all-elec­tric eVTOL air taxi. 

The part­ner­ship, signed at the start of the year, will allow Joby Avi­a­tion to take advan­tage of Toyota’s wealth of expe­ri­ence in man­u­fac­tur­ing, qual­i­ty and cost con­trol — espe­cial­ly as it also intends to launch its own air taxi ser­vice in 2023.

While in Europe, Ger­man-based start-ups Lil­i­um and Volo­copter are mak­ing giant strides, with the for­mer send­ing a remote-con­trolled pro­to­type on its maid­en flight last year and lat­er com­plet­ed the first phase of test­ing.

Volo­copter secured €87 mil­lion in Series C Fund­ing from glob­al logis­tics giant DB Schenker, with the mon­ey being used to secure cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its VoloC­i­ty air­craft. It aims to offer ful­ly autonomous com­mer­cial flights with­in the next decade.

As well as fer­ry­ing human pas­sen­gers between sub­urbs and major cities, eVTOLs have also shown their worth in the trans­porta­tion of med­ical equip­ment. Chi­nese-based autonomous aer­i­al vehi­cle (AAV) firm EHang suc­cess­ful­ly used one of its eVTOL air­crafts to trav­el 4km and deliv­er sup­plies to Hezhou’s Peo­ple Hos­pi­tal, as part of the coun­try’s response to the coro­n­avirus out­break.

Work is also under way to pro­vide the appro­pri­ate infra­struc­ture, with Sky­ports part­ner­ing with land­lords, local gov­ern­ments and large prop­er­ty own­ers to locate and acquire suit­able sites for ver­ti­ports. The com­pa­ny col­lab­o­rat­ed with Volo­copter in Octo­ber 2019 and launched the world’s first pas­sen­ger ver­ti­port pro­to­type in Sin­ga­pore. Called the Volo­Port, the first com­mer­cial flights are planned with­in the next cou­ple of years.

The advan­tages of air taxis are sig­nif­i­cant. For many, they will go a long way to help ease the  traf­fic con­ges­tion issues expe­ri­enced in some of the world’s largest cities. British-based Ver­ti­cal Aero­space claims its own eVTOL air­craft Ser­aph can reduce jour­ney times by as much as 80 per cent, and trav­el from Heathrow Air­port to Canary Wharf in Lon­don in just 13 min­utes — as opposed to more than 80 min­utes when mak­ing the same jour­ney by car.

As eVTOLs are pow­ered by elec­tric motors rather than jet engines, they will dras­ti­cal­ly reduce the impact of air pol­lu­tion. Joby Avi­a­tion claims its own eVTOL air­craft will be 100 times qui­eter dur­ing take-off and land­ing than a con­ven­tion­al air­craft.

But where there are advan­tages, there will also be some bar­ri­ers. If eVTOLs are to one day become autonomous and no longer need human involve­ment to pilot them, man­u­fac­tur­ers will need to prove to civ­il avi­a­tion author­i­ties that they are safe to car­ry pas­sen­gers. 

Any eVTOL air­craft which has been designed using small rotors would fall to the ground in the worst-case sce­nario, and deploy­ing safe­ty para­chutes from above 120ft in the air would be too short a dis­tance for them to ful­ly open and deploy in time. A crash ear­ly on would sure­ly lose a passenger’s trust in the urban air mar­ket as a whole.

How­ev­er, the likes of Lil­i­um, Volo­copter and USA/New Zealand-based aero­space start-up Wisk have already clocked up thou­sands of hours worth of test flights, so it seems every­thing is being done and tak­en seri­ous­ly to ensure air taxis can become a trust­ed method of trans­port.

And then there is the cost. While many feel air taxis would be a lux­u­ry exclu­sive­ly for the mega-rich, Uber Ele­vate claims that the cost of one would be the same price the com­pa­ny charges on the road. Time will tell whether they will be as cheap as their coun­ter­parts on the ground.

The urban air mobil­i­ty mar­ket con­tin­ues to grow at an alarm­ing pace, and if ear­ly pre­dic­tions are cor­rect, the intro­duc­tion of eVTOLs will undoubt­ed­ly make trav­el­ling across our cities a much more pleas­ant expe­ri­ence. A new age of avi­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy is just around the cor­ner, and many are eager to see if it will take us to new heights.