SMG Consulting provides fresh update to its AAM Reality Index rating tool for eVTOL aircraft

SMG Con­sult­ing’s Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Index, a rat­ing tool which describes the like­li­hood of an eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er cer­ti­fy­ing its air­craft, enter­ing ser­vice and pro­duc­ing thou­sands of units each year — has been updat­ed with new infor­ma­tion.

The lat­est ver­sion includes infor­ma­tion gath­ered since Feb­ru­ary 2021 about four of the eVTOL air­craft OEMs — Archer, EHang, Lil­i­um and Wisk. Six­teen com­pa­nies are list­ed on the tool in total, with Archer and Dufour Aero­space the lat­est to be includ­ed.

Wisk has had its rat­ing increase from 7.0 to 7.5, due to its tech­nol­o­gy readi­ness and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion progress, while Archer and EHang have had their rat­ings low­ered — to 6.9 and 7.4 respec­tive­ly.

Wisk plans to launch the first-of-its-kind trans­port tri­al for autonomous eVTOL air­craft in New Zealand lat­er this year, and is team­ing up with NASA to cre­ate new frame­work for autonomous pas­sen­ger flight.

Lil­i­um has moved up to 6.2 from 5.5, due to its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion progress. The com­pa­ny announced its SPAC merg­er with Qell Acqui­si­tion Corp in March, when it also revealed details about its sev­en-seater Lil­i­um Jet. The air­craft received CRI-A01 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion basis from EASA in 2020.

Ser­gio Cecut­ta, Part­ner at SMG Con­sult­ing, clar­i­fied to eVTOL Insights that the index did not con­sid­er any of the SPAC deals for this lat­est update, as none of them have closed yet.

When speak­ing to eVTOL Insights ear­li­er this year about the back­ground behind the AAM Real­i­ty Index, he said: “The hope is to demys­ti­fy a lit­tle bit the indus­try to peo­ple who are new to it. While we have seen a lot of strate­gic invest­ment, there is still a lot of mon­ey sit­ting on the side­lines because they want to bet­ter under­stand what is going on

“One of the ideas behind the index is to pro­vide a lit­tle bit of guid­ance to new entrants in the indus­try, either an investor or sup­pli­er that hasn’t decid­ed whether they want to par­tic­i­pate in the indus­try or not. It gives them an idea of which folks they should start talk­ing to.

“The oth­er hope is that some­thing like this attracts even more inter­est to the indus­try and the right play­ers. We want to make sure that we broad­cast to the world which com­pa­nies have the most poten­tial, so the invest­ment goes in the right places.”

As well as the AAM Real­i­ty Index, SMG Con­sult­ing has also pro­duced a world map which show­cas­es the cities where urban air mobil­i­ty ser­vices are like­ly to launch and in what year. Notable exam­ples include Los Ange­les and Mia­mi in the USA, Sin­ga­pore and France’s cap­i­tal, Paris.

For more infor­ma­tion about the AAM Real­i­ty Index, click here.