Future of Urban Air Mobility discussed in ILA Berlin webinar

Senior indus­try lead­ers talked about the future of the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) mar­ket yes­ter­day (Thurs­day), in a webi­nar which is part of the world’s first dig­i­tal aero­space exhi­bi­tion.

Until 31st July, Inno­va­tion, Lead­er­ship and Aero­space (ILA) Berlin will offer pre­sen­ta­tions, dis­cus­sions and webi­na­rs about top­ics such as avi­a­tion, defense and secu­ri­ty, space, and unmanned sys­tems.

Each ses­sion con­sists of estab­lished OEMs, UAM start-ups, oper­a­tors and infra­struc­ture providers, and this one, enti­tled ‘The Future of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty, was organ­ised by Roland Berg­er.

The pan­el fea­tured Derek Cheng, Head of UAM Asia/Pacific at Air­bus, Remo Ger­ber, Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer at Lil­i­um, Felix Lee, EHang’s Over­seas Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, Pro­fes­sor. Georg Rosen­feld, Exec­u­tive Board Mem­ber of IFG Ingol­stadt and Dun­can Walk­er, Founder and CEO of Sky­ports.

Top­ics dis­cussed includ­ed the per­spec­tive of UAM before the Covid-19 cri­sis, the impact it has had on the indus­try (mar­ket demand, tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment, pilot/test cas­es, imple­men­ta­tion roadmap), and the oppor­tu­ni­ties and key suc­cess fac­tors in the ‘new nor­mal’.

Cheng start­ed off the dis­cus­sion by say­ing Urban Air Mobil­i­ty is more than just an air­craft, but about the val­ue chain. This includes sup­port and ser­vice, air traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tems, flight oper­a­tions, ground infra­struc­ture and pas­sen­ger solu­tions.

He said: “At Air­bus, we believe Urban Air Mobil­i­ty can pro­vide a 3D dimen­sion and are work­ing towards green and sus­tain­able avi­a­tion. That is why we have set up an Urban Air Mobil­i­ty unit, focus­ing on a vari­ety of projects to try to open up the skies so we are able to con­tribute as a mobil­i­ty option in cities.”

Cheng added that Air­bus believes Urban Air Mobil­i­ty would grad­u­al­ly shift from a pre­mi­um to mass-mar­ket solu­tion, and that auton­o­my in vehi­cles would appear in the mid-2020s to 2030s — with full inte­gra­tion into urban envi­ron­ments.

Talk­ing next was Prof. Rosen­feld about IFG Ingol­stadt, a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary of the Ger­man city which mar­kets com­mer­cial urban space and has been devel­op­ing busi­ness-relat­ed infra­struc­ture since 1969.

It joined the Euro­pean Urban Air Mobil­i­ty ini­tia­tive two years ago as a front-run­ner, join­ing 16 oth­er cities/regions across the con­ti­nent to help bring urban mobil­i­ty to the ‘third dimen­sion’. Since then, IFG Ingol­stadt has built up a net­work of more than 70 part­ners.

Prof. Rosen­feld said: “We believe Urban Air Mobil­i­ty will have a major impact on future traf­fic and trans­port sys­tems and of course, cities and urban areas play an impor­tant part in that. That is why Ingol­stadt joined this ini­tia­tive.

“Our strat­e­gy is to sim­ply build up a project port­fo­lio in var­i­ous rel­e­vant areas which involves the city in some way…it is about pub­lic accep­tance of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty and cre­at­ing eco-sys­tems for start-ups, which we are doing at the moment at Air­bus’ site in Manch­ing.”

Rosen­feld used the exam­ple of the city’s project to build a new main rail­way sta­tion, which includes the sim­u­la­tion of a ver­ti­port or land­ing site in the plan­ning appli­ca­tion — say­ing that the city ‘can learn what it would need to pre­pare for this new infra­struc­ture’.

As a provider of the ground infra­struc­ture for the emerg­ing avi­a­tion mar­ket, Sky­ports built the world’s first ver­ti­port in Sin­ga­pore last year in a joint ven­ture with Volo­copter. Walk­er said the com­pa­ny focus­es on three main areas:

“It is work­ing with reg­u­la­tors to help define what the stan­dards for ver­ti­ports will be going for­ward; work­ing with cities and landown­ers to under­stand the opti­mal lay­out of a ver­ti­port net­work, and work­ing with vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers to under­stand the mar­kets in which they want to roll out, the per­for­mance require­ments they have for ground infra­struc­ture and the cus­tomer jour­ney they expect as they start to move peo­ple around.”

Walk­er added that he is ‘not wor­ried’ about cus­tomer demand, but more vehi­cle sup­ply, say­ing the com­pa­ny expects a ‘rel­a­tive­ly slow few years’ but then ‘a rapid deploy­ment after that’.

Lil­i­um plans to make its on-demand air taxi ser­vice avail­able to pas­sen­gers in cities across the world by 2025, and when asked what the main chal­lenge was in the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket was, Ger­ber said: “In a com­plex pro­gramme like this, every­thing needs to come togeth­er at the same time in order to pass the ground tests, flight tests. There are a lot of mov­ing ele­ments which need to work.”

While the pan­el agreed the impact of Covid-19 has cer­tain­ly had an impact on the indus­try, Walk­er added that drone deliv­er­ies has actu­al­ly been a ‘huge accel­er­a­tor’, with peo­ple under­stand­ing the ben­e­fits of using machines to trans­port prod­ucts to remote loca­tions.

Sky­ports joined forces with Thales in May to con­duct a two-week tri­al for the NHS in Scot­land, by using drones to trans­port urgent med­ical car­go to iso­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ties as part of its response to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

One key chal­lenge to solve for the suc­cess of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty is pub­lic accep­tance. Prof. Rosen­feld used an exam­ple when Air­bus show­cased their projects in Ingol­stadt’s city cen­tre, with passers-by able to view plans and ask ques­tions.

“That helps to get good feed­back, but peo­ple want infor­ma­tion. They want to know whether this will be part of the local trans­porta­tion sys­tem, or a ser­vice that will be only by used the wealthy,” he said.

Walk­er added that increas­ing the amount of pub­lic vehi­cle demon­stra­tions would allow peo­ple to engage with OEMs and build up a cus­tomer base for when air­craft becomes ful­ly oper­a­tional.

He said: “There is no sub­sti­tute for real-life demon­stra­tions. When­ev­er we have done that, feed­back in the vast major­i­ty has been very good. In Sin­ga­pore, peo­ple could hear the vehi­cles which gave them visu­al con­text and an under­stand­ing of what the impact could be.”

For more infor­ma­tion about ILA Goes Dig­i­tal, and to view the timetable of pro­grammes for the rest of this month, vis­it https://www.ila-berlin.de/en/ila-goes-digital