CoMotion Live hosts Urban Air Mobility discussion about regulations and public acceptance

Some of the indus­try’s top thinkers came togeth­er for a high-lev­el con­ver­sa­tion about reg­u­la­tions in Urban Air Mobil­i­ty — as part of the lat­est episode by CoMo­tion Live.

Co-spon­sored by eVTOL devel­op­er Wisk, which is build­ing its all-elec­tric, self-fly­ing air taxi called Cora, the ses­sion was enti­tled ‘The Sky’s the Lim­it: Reg­u­lat­ing the UAM Rev­o­lu­tion’ and mod­er­at­ed by CoMo­tion CEO and Founder, John Rossant.

Pan­el speak­ers includ­ed Eric Alli­son, Head of Uber Ele­vate, Dan Dal­ton, Vice Pres­i­dent of Glob­al Part­ner­ships at Wisk, and Flo­ri­an Lennert, Head of Mobil­i­ty at NEOM, Sau­di Ara­bi­a’s future city which has eVTOLs at the heart of its trans­porta­tion hub.

Intro­duc­ing this ses­sion, Rossant said: “Urban Air Mobil­i­ty was bare­ly on the radar four years ago and only men­tioned in pass­ing. But at every edi­tion of CoMo­tion LA, it has got more and more impor­tant and gets more space.

“As the mar­ket starts to open up, the impor­tant pol­i­cy ques­tions remain: who reg­u­lates the air traf­fic, how do you man­age sound and visu­al pol­lu­tion and oth­er neg­a­tive exter­nal­i­ties, should air­craft be lim­it­ed to fixed routes or free to roam?”

Kick­ing off the dis­cus­sion, Rossant asked Alli­son about Uber’s approach to reg­u­la­to­ry issues:

Alli­son said: “We’ve tak­en a fun­da­men­tal­ly part­ner­ship-based approach in this ini­tia­tive. We have worked to build alliances with man­u­fac­tur­ers and reg­u­la­tors at both the nation­al, as well as state and local lev­el, because we know that to bring a new sys­tem of mobil­i­ty into prac­ti­cal and wide use, it real­ly is a sys­tem prob­lem. So you have to look at it from a holis­tic per­spec­tive that takes into account all these dif­fer­ent pieces.

“Avi­a­tion is a high­ly reg­u­lat­ed space and the reg­u­la­tions are pret­ty well set at this point. We think there is room for improve­ment and incre­men­tal changes to those reg­u­la­tions, but know that that takes time. How do we design a sys­tem in part­ner­ship with the OEMs we are work­ing with, as well as the oth­ers across the infra­struc­ture and the pub­lic and pri­vate space?”

Alli­son also added that from a prac­ti­cal sense, start­ing with pilot­ed vehi­cles in the near term is the way to work with­in the exist­ing reg­u­la­tion frame­work at both the pilot­ing rule lev­el, oper­at­ing rule lev­el, as well as the air­space rules, and encour­age think­ing that there is enough chal­lenges and some of the tech­nolo­gies that we’re intro­duc­ing that will make these vehi­cles safer, qui­eter and eco­nom­i­cal than a typ­i­cal heli­copter oper­a­tion.

Speak­ing more about Wisk’s Cora air­craft, Dal­ton said its main use case will be as an air taxi. The com­pa­ny resumed flight test­ing in June, fol­low­ing a brief pause due to Covid-19.

“It is our mis­sion to make Cora avail­able to every­one. To start with, com­mer­cial avi­a­tion was a lux­u­ry ser­vice and it is now a stan­dard main mode of trans­porta­tion for long-dis­tance hauls, so there is an evo­lu­tion and avi­a­tion has seen that. Hope­ful­ly we will be able to make that a bit of a short­er tran­si­tion over time.”

NEOM is a planned cross-bound­er city in the north-west­ern province of Tabuk in Sau­di Ara­bia. It is planned incor­po­rate smart city tech­nolo­gies and func­tion as a tourist des­ti­na­tion, cov­er­ing a total area of 26,500 km² (10,200 sq mi) and extend­ing 460km along the Red Sea.

Talk­ing about the phi­los­o­phy of the city, Lennart said: “One of the key chal­lenges to be faced as the indus­try rethinks urban devel­op­ment in the 21st cen­tu­ry is about how the indus­try enables per­son­al pub­lic mobil­i­ty in cities, with­out falling into the trap of what we did in the 20th Cen­tu­ry, which is reor­gan­is­ing our cities around indi­vid­ual modes of trans­port.

“In our view, this is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to achieve sev­er­al things: to real­ly build a tru­ly sus­tain­able mobil­i­ty sys­tem. So we are inter­est­ed in any form of elec­tric mobil­i­ty. We [NEOM] will be 100 per cent renew­ably pow­ered so that gives us a fan­tas­tic base to look at any form of elec­tric, which is one of the key dri­vers as to why we’re inter­est­ed in eVTOL.

“Sec­ond­ly, we believe there is a fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty in the world to rethink mobil­i­ty, in par­tic­u­lar for those cities which have yet to be built where there is no infra­struc­ture. And for those regions that may not have the kind of infra­struc­ture that we have in oth­er coun­tries.

“We’re very excit­ed and as a green­field site, want to be a region which helps accel­er­ate that evo­lu­tion towards elec­tric air mobil­i­ty and help enable the ear­ly test­ing, pilot­ing and scal­ing up of these solu­tions.”

The next dis­cus­sion focused on Urban Air Mobil­i­ty in cities, and how some are con­cerned about noise and that its com­mu­ni­ties should have a say in what goes on in the air­space above them.

When asked whether cities should have a seat at the table, when it comes to reg­u­la­tions in Urban Air Mobil­i­ty, Alli­son said: “Cities are key stake­hold­ers in how do we bring these types of mobil­i­ty to life and how we see it start and start oper­at­ing.

“How do we bring them in as stake­hold­ers in this con­text, and that is a very impor­tant thing for us to be focused on. In order to have accep­tance of this new form of mobil­i­ty, we have to have all of the stake­hold­ers at the table, not just the cities but the broad­er pub­lic. We want peo­ple to want this type of mobil­i­ty in their com­mu­ni­ties, not oppose it.”

Dal­ton added: “From our per­spec­tive as not only a air­craft design­er, but also as an oper­a­tor, there are two folds to that: As a mis­sion for Wisk, it’s how do we serve those under­served, and unlock­ing those future use cas­es that with tra­di­tion­al avi­a­tion have nev­er real­ly been avail­able to larg­er pop­u­laces in these dense urban envi­ron­ments. How do we bring that to those areas with­out impact­ing them in a neg­a­tive way?

“Between dis­trib­uted elec­tric propul­sion, and the fact it is elec­tric, you’re not going to have the same impact with tra­di­tion­al avi­a­tion with loud tur­bine engines and large air­craft com­ing over neigh­bour­hoods.”

CoMo­tion launched its inau­gur­al hybrid event in Los Ange­les in 2017, which cel­e­brates the future of mobil­i­ty through con­fer­ences and work­shops with glob­al mobil­i­ty lead­ers, as well as exten­sive demos and exhi­bi­tion spaces.

This year’s event will be streamed live from 17th-19th Novem­ber, and fea­tures more than 90 speak­ers and 2,500 par­tic­i­pants.

To watch the full dis­cus­sion, and for more details about CoMo­tion Live, vis­it https://comotionnews.com/2020/08/28/9–2‑comotion-live-the-skys-the-limit-regulating-the-uam-revolution/.