Uber Elevate gives insight into its air taxi ride-sharing service at Revolution.Aero’s Urban Aviation talk

Uber Ele­vate says it is still on track with its 2023 time­line for the ini­tial com­mer­cial launch of its air taxi ride-shar­ing plat­form, which is set to start in Dal­las, Los Ange­les and Mel­bourne.

The com­pa­ny is work­ing with its part­ners to devel­op shared air trans­porta­tion between sub­urbs and cities, and ulti­mate­ly, with­in cities, and Head of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment, Wyatt Smith, gave an fas­ci­nat­ing update dur­ing Revolution.Aero’s lat­est Town Hall Meet­ing yes­ter­day (Tues­day).

When asked if Uber’s ser­vice is still on tar­get, Smith said: “The answer is yes. We still see progress in the ecosys­tem that would lead us to the view­point that we are track­ing towards com­mer­cial cer­ti­fi­ca­tion as soon as late 2023.

“We think that is going to enable to get start­ed on a mod­est scale in launch mar­kets, so we can be focused on a future in which this grows with time as more entrants enter the sec­tor, and as more tech­nolo­gies dri­ve towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

Talk­ing about Uber’s cur­rent work, he added: “We like many of those in the mobil­i­ty sec­tor, have been work­ing through the chal­lenges of Covid, which are expan­sive, and it’s been a chal­leng­ing time for the indus­try.

“I think because we’ve been very focused on ways in which we can pro­mote safe­ty, ways in which peo­ple can get back to the work­ing mobil­i­ty in places where the virus is under con­trol, it’s enabling Uber to see places where peo­ple are going back to work, and mobil­i­ty is start­ing to pick back up, so that’s some­thing we’ve been fol­low­ing close­ly.”

Smith also paid cred­it to the work of Uber’s part­ners dur­ing Covid-19, which include OEMs such as Bell, EmbraerX, Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty and Joby Avi­a­tion — which released more details about their eVTOL con­cept ear­li­er this month.

“It’s been so impres­sive to watch the way in which they’ve applied inno­va­tion, grit and resilience to be able to work through the chal­lenges of this time,” he added.

“We’ve already heard about the suc­cess of Joby, not only rais­ing cap­i­tal at an oppor­tune time, but also think­ing through ways they can cre­ative­ly con­tin­ue mak­ing progress. We’re cer­tain­ly cheer­ing them on.”

And Smith also said that Uber Ele­vate would wel­come the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work and expand the num­ber of indus­try part­ners, which cur­rent­ly stands at eight. He added that two new part­ners are due to be announced soon, but would­n’t reveal any fur­ther details about who they are.

“We speak and have the chance to learn about so many inter­est­ing tech­nolo­gies, and to learn from entre­pre­neurs from across the world. We’re always active about assess­ing the land­scape and talk­ing with peo­ple about what’s ahead.

“Our view has been to focus on an eco­nom­ic mis­sion spec, that would give a vision for speed, pay­load, range, charge time — effec­tive­ly a set of per­for­mance met­rics that we think will enable suc­cess in cre­at­ing a high­ly pro­duc­tive, high­ly utilised vehi­cle sys­tem.

“And any pro­duc­er out there that can devel­op a con­cept that meets or exceeds that mis­sion spec is an OEM we want to talk to. We look for­ward to meet­ing many more over the com­ing weeks and months.”

When asked about Uber’s start­ing price per mile when ser­vices begin in 2023, Smith said that the com­pa­ny’s goal is to be able to play a role in help­ing to con­tribute to democ­ra­tis­ing air trav­el.

“Acces­si­bil­i­ty is a real­ly impor­tant part in that. We’ve learnt a lot from the Uber­copter ser­vice that we test­ed in New York City and through that we’ve learnt a lot of insight about con­sumer pref­er­ences. We think it’s very fea­si­ble to start with a prod­uct that looks and feels like an Uber Black ser­vice from a price-point stand­point.

“Start­ing at the high­er end of the mar­ket, as you begin to gen­er­ate more pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and you get more util­i­sa­tion, you’ll be able to dri­ve to more acces­si­ble price points with time.

“Gen­er­al­ly, I would say it’s in the realm of around $6 per pas­sen­ger mile which we see as the place where things start. And then through time, you can begin to amor­tise costs more effec­tive­ly to give us some­thing more com­pet­i­tive com­pared to ground-based alter­na­tives.”

Anoth­er key ques­tion asked by the audi­ence was whether Uber’s first com­mer­cial ser­vices in 2023 will be pilot­ed or autonomous, and Smith addressed this point, say­ing: “They will be pilot­ed from the start.”

He added: “This is a cer­ti­fied pilot, oper­at­ing a vehi­cle under VFR con­di­tions. That vehi­cle will most like­ly be cer­ti­fied by the FAA at the start, because they are def­i­nite­ly the reg­u­la­tor who a lot of our part­ners are work­ing with in the US on cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“We do think that the future will have auton­o­my as a very impor­tant and core part of the over­all safe­ty approach, that enables scale and high den­si­ty of oper­a­tions inside cities.

“That is a bit fur­ther out, but I think the advan­tages of these new con­cepts is that they have such advanced avion­ics capa­bil­i­ties and inher­ent safe­ty and redun­dan­cy in the air­frame that when you over­lay auton­o­my as well, it unlocks a lot of growth poten­tial.

“But this will start as a tra­di­tion­al pilot­ed ser­vice and then through time, we will see the move towards auton­o­my.”

Smith was then asked what Uber’s expect­ed ‘sweet spot’ would be for its mile range and whether the dis­tance would be increased over time.

“Our mis­sion spec calls for between 20 to 60 miles of range for the tar­get mis­sion,” he said. “Truth­ful­ly, most mis­sions are going to be on the short­er side of that and in places where there are extreme­ly dense con­ges­tion, you can see time sav­ings on lots of trips as short as 10–12 miles.

“Our view is that Uber is best at being able to facil­i­tate lots of mobil­i­ty inside cities, rather than between cities, and so we think about that eVTOL mis­sion real­ly singing for us as it helps to move peo­ple around cities as opposed to inter-city flights.

“How­ev­er as bat­tery tech improves and spe­cif­ic ener­gy den­si­ty rates con­tin­ue to grow with time, we think it unlocks a much broad­er mis­sion pro­file and we’re excit­ed about what that is going to do for the indus­try.”

Anoth­er key top­ic is infra­struc­ture, and Smith was asked a final ques­tion about how Uber will address con­cerns by city plan­ners regard­ing increased ground con­ges­tion at ver­ti­port loca­tions.

“Local offi­cials are so cen­tral to being able to launch this ser­vice suc­cess­ful­ly and effec­tive­ly. We’re real­ly com­mit­ted to work­ing close­ly with them to be able to under­stand their expec­ta­tions on per­mit­ting, equi­ty, access, noise, and being able to ensure there is a respon­si­ble way to deliv­er this new tech­nol­o­gy in a way that adds to the num­ber of options peo­ple have inside those cities.

“We were excit­ed to col­lab­o­rate with the city of Los Ange­les, as they were part­ner­ing with the World Eco­nom­ic Forum and oth­er part­ners to devel­op the Prin­ci­ples of the Urban Sky doc­u­ment. And we will con­tin­ue work­ing in part­ner­ship with city offi­cials, elect­ed and appoint­ed civic lead­ers to be able to do this.”

Revolution.Aero’s vir­tu­al Town Hall meet­ings have been set up to help keep the indus­try con­nect­ed and informed about the lat­est devel­op­ments dur­ing the ongo­ing Covid-19 cri­sis. The next one will be about Autonomous Avi­a­tion and is on 3rd Novem­ber at 4pm BST.

To watch the dis­cus­sion in full, which also fea­tured Pawan Daswani of Cit­i­group, Dean Dono­van of Dia­mond­Stream Part­ners, Cyrus Sigari of Up.Partners and Bill Schuh­le of BAE Sys­tems, click here.