PODCAST: Craig Foster of Valour Consultancy on Battery Costs, CASM and Commercial Reality

The lat­est episode of the eVTOL Insights Pod­cast wel­comes Craig Fos­ter, Co-founder and Senior Research Con­sul­tant at Val­or Con­sul­tan­cy, to dis­cuss the com­mer­cial real­i­ties shap­ing the future of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty.

Draw­ing on Val­or’s lat­est research into both the elec­tric air taxi and com­mer­cial drone mar­kets, Fos­ter explores why the indus­try is enter­ing a new phase where com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty is becom­ing just as impor­tant as tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion.

Through­out the con­ver­sa­tion, Fos­ter exam­ines the assump­tions that fuelled the sec­tor’s ear­ly growth, includ­ing expec­ta­tions around bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy, oper­at­ing costs and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion time­lines. He explains why met­rics such as Cost per Avail­able Seat Mile (CASM) are crit­i­cal to under­stand­ing whether pas­sen­ger eVTOL ser­vices can become prof­itable, while high­light­ing the chal­lenges posed by bat­tery replace­ment costs, infra­struc­ture invest­ment, land­ing fees and pilot avail­abil­i­ty.

The dis­cus­sion also looks beyond pas­sen­ger air­craft, iden­ti­fy­ing defence, car­go oper­a­tions and region­al air mobil­i­ty as poten­tial­ly stronger near-term busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. Fos­ter argues that the com­mer­cial drone indus­try pro­vides valu­able lessons for AAM by demon­strat­ing that long-term suc­cess depends on solv­ing real oper­a­tional prob­lems rather than sim­ply intro­duc­ing new tech­nol­o­gy.