SMG Consulting creates map to highlight the launch cities of the first eVTOL aircraft services

A map has been cre­at­ed by SMG Con­sult­ing which shows cities which have announced the launch of pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing eVTOL air­craft or urban air mobil­i­ty ser­vices in the near future.

Based on pub­licly avail­able data, the map includes the year of when ser­vices are esti­mat­ed to begin and the name of the OEM in charge of imple­men­ta­tion. This fol­lows the cre­ation of SMG Con­sult­ing’s AAM Real­i­ty Index, a rat­ing tool which cur­rent­ly lists 16 eVTOL air­craft devel­op­ers and assess­es their progress towards the deliv­ery of a cer­ti­fied prod­uct at mass scale pro­duc­tion.

Speak­ing to eVTOL Insights, Ser­gio Cecut­ta, Part­ner at SMG Con­sult­ing, said: “We want­ed to cre­ate a sim­ple, intu­itive way to see when and what cities and OEMs have announced upcom­ing AAM ser­vices. We have already updat­ed the map, fol­low­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with Lil­i­um, to include their Ger­man net­work.

“We plan to keep the map con­tin­u­ous­ly updat­ed with any new announce­ment made by cities and/or OEMs.It is our very first step on the way to cre­ate a ded­i­cat­ed real­i­ty index for the AAM oper­a­tors.”

Notable exam­ples on the map include Lil­i­um in Flori­da which announced its plans to set up a ver­ti­port net­work in the US state with Fer­rovial at the start of the year.

As well as Lil­i­um, Archer has also sig­nalled its inten­tion to launch its own urban air mobil­i­ty net­work in Flori­da by 2024, choos­ing Mia­mi as its sec­ond city after Los Ange­les.

Out­side of the USA, oth­er cities to adopt urban air mobil­i­ty ser­vices include Sin­ga­pore, which is where Ger­man start­up Volo­copter intends to launch its first pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing ser­vices in by 2023. South Korea is also high­light­ed on the map, main­ly due to the gov­ern­men­t’s planned road map to accel­er­ate the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of air taxis in the coun­try as ear­ly as 2025.

The coun­try’s pub­lic-pri­vate con­sul­ta­tion com­pa­ny known as ‘Team UAM Korea’ con­sists of key play­ers in the indus­try such as Hyundai Motor Group and Han­wha Sys­tems — which has a 30 per cent stake in Overair and cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing its first elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem ahead of test­ing this year.

Announc­ing its map, the com­pa­ny added: “More and more cities and OEMs are announc­ing part­ner­ships to launch Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ser­vices, whether they are urban or inter­ci­ty. To cap­ture in an easy to read way all this infor­ma­tion, we have cre­at­ed a map of all the cities that have announced the launch of AAM ser­vices, based on pub­licly avail­able data. We include the year in which the ser­vices will launch as well as the OEM that is launch­ing the ser­vice, if avail­able.

“Final­ly, a GA air­craft icon rep­re­sents the cities launch­ing an urban air mobil­i­ty ser­vice, while a jet air­craft icon rep­re­sents the cities launch­ing an inter­ci­ty air mobil­i­ty ser­vice.”