Varon Vehicles’ first think tank sparks discussion about Urban Air Mobility in Latin America

The first think tank about the imple­men­ta­tion of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty in Latin Amer­i­ca took place on Tues­day, and fea­tured a pan­el of great speak­ers in the event organ­ised by Varon Vehi­cles Cor­po­ra­tion.

Host­ed by Felipe Varon and Andres Vejara­no, they aim to bring togeth­er stake­hold­ers from across the indus­try so they can join in its con­ver­sa­tions. Enti­tled ‘Urban Air Mobil­i­ty in Latin Amer­i­ca’, the pan­el con­sist­ed of Edgar Rivera, Direc­tor of Reg­u­la­tions at Aero­civ­il – Colom­bia; Fly­ing Cars His­to­ri­an Jake Schultz, Tama­ra Bul­lock of Alti­tude Strate­gies; Natalia Bar­bour of New Mobil­i­ty at the Depart­ment of Urban Stud­ies and Plan­ning, MIT, and Michael Dyment of Nexa Cap­i­tal Part­ners.

Intro­duc­ing the ses­sion, Varon said: “We want to talk about what Latin Amer­i­ca as a region brings as a mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ty for this new indus­try. I want to hear everybody’s com­ments around the mobil­i­ty prob­lem.

“It has sev­er­al lay­ers that we do not see in the devel­oped world, such as infra­struc­ture and very high lev­els of pol­lu­tion ris­ing from the num­ber of vehi­cles. We have a crim­i­nal­i­ty lay­er unfor­tu­nate­ly, but it is very real, and it all cre­ates pres­sure to find new way for mobil­i­ty and going into the third dimen­sion.”

Varon added that anoth­er issue which Urban Air Mobil­i­ty might have to tack­le is city growth, say­ing: “It’s the sys­tem­at­ic inabil­i­ty from gov­ern­ments to pro­vide prop­er mobil­i­ty infra­struc­ture to alle­vi­ate the pres­sure for growth in cities.”

Lead­ing into the con­ver­sa­tion, Bul­lock is the founder of the avi­a­tion and pub­lic cor­po­rate affairs firm Alti­tude Strate­gies. She said that Urban Air Mobil­i­ty needs to focus on the peo­ple who would use it the most.

“When you talk about fly­ing taxis, it needs to be under­stand­able to every­one in Latin Amer­i­ca,” she said. “With VTOL air­craft, that is where we need to do a lot of work, by rais­ing aware­ness and telling peo­ple how it helps cus­tomers, gov­ern­ments and cities.”

She added that cities such as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janiero in Brazil will like­ly be the first to adopt their own Urban Air Mobil­i­ty eco-sys­tem, but stressed that it will only be pop­u­lar if the focus on safe­ty is met and the pric­ing is right.

Dyment, who is Man­ag­ing Part­ner at Nexa Cap­i­tal Part­ners, said that from an eco­nom­ic point of view, Sao Paulo has been a world leader in terms of heli­copter trans­porta­tion – which it has been doing for at least two decades. “This new eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy should be able to reduce the cost of mobil­i­ty with dra­mat­ic effect”, he said.

“Heli­copter oper­a­tors are always oper­at­ing on a mar­gin; mov­ing into elec­tric flight should allow oper­a­tors to cut costs in half which will see a dra­mat­ic fall in tick­et prices…to the point when peo­ple can afford to use the ser­vice at a price of what an Uber costs today.”

Talk­ing about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Colom­bia, Riv­iera said the coun­try tried to imple­ment heli­copter trans­porta­tion in Medellin, but added that it wasn’t finan­cial­ly viable – say­ing this form of trans­port is quite expen­sive and only used by cor­po­rate VIPs.

“We want to put in place a sys­tem that can be more afford­able for peo­ple and in a more envi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly way, which solves the mobil­i­ty prob­lem in our cities. Road infra­struc­ture is not grow­ing at the same pace as the cities, so trav­el­ling by road is quite slow.”

Com­ment­ing on what tools need to be avail­able to solve the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty prob­lem in Latin Amer­i­ca, Bar­bour, who is a post-doc­tor­ate asso­ciate at MIT’s Depart­ment of Urban Stud­ies and Plan­ning, said there is the prob­lem of safe­ty, con­ges­tion and the envi­ron­men­tal impact which is not allow­ing cities to use trans­port that deliv­ers eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties.

“It is about ask­ing the right ques­tions. If we can solve con­ges­tion and safe­ty, we can solve oth­er prob­lems that are being grap­pled with”, she added.

Varon agreed, say­ing: “It [city growth] is hav­ing a big impact on people’s lives and we want to turn this into a mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

Bul­lock men­tioned that the eco­nom­ic impact of Covid-19 might open up new oppor­tu­ni­ties for avi­a­tion, adding: “This is a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty for Latin Amer­i­ca with Urban Air Mobil­i­ty devel­op­ing elec­tric flight. I think we are open­ing up a new chap­ter that could be much big­ger than com­mer­cial avi­a­tion. Peo­ple are now more keen to go in small­er vehi­cles than a huge plane, but it will be down to price.

“How fast can we plan? If it works, can we trans­fer the tech­nol­o­gy to oth­er cities and what changes needs to be made to make it suc­cess­ful else­where.”

And Schultz praised the ‘inven­tive­ness’ of com­pa­nies in the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket, with more than 300 eVTOL designs list­ed in the Ver­ti­cal Flight Society’s World Air­craft Direc­to­ry.

“There have been hun­dreds of designs at the moment because no-one knows what the answers are at the moment. There is so much inno­va­tion and to be able to take that to Latin Amer­i­ca is very excit­ing.”

Talk­ing about the dif­fer­ent reg­u­la­tions, Bul­lock said that work needs to be done to ensure it doesn’t put off any poten­tial invest­ment. She said: “Build­ing the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty eco-sys­tem and the whole infra­struc­ture, we should all some­thing from com­mer­cial avi­a­tion. When speak­ing to CEOs, one thing that keeps them awake at night is dif­fer­ent reg­u­la­tions in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Glob­al investors will be more attract­ed if they can see some con­sis­ten­cy.”

Dymant added to Bullock’s point and men­tioned there are four sup­ply chains which must be involved in coor­di­nat­ed efforts for Urban Air Mobil­i­ty to be viable on a city-by-city basis: Oper­a­tors, eVTOL Air­craft Man­u­fac­tur­ers, Ground Infra­struc­ture and Traf­fic Man­age­ment.

In terms of invest­ment, he also said that Colombia’s cap­i­tal city Bogo­ta would require $40 mil­lion to build out the heli­port net­work to pro­vide the net­work effect and make it prof­itable.

Varon Vehi­cles has organ­ised sev­en oth­er think tanks tak­ing place through­out August, Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber – cul­mi­nat­ing in a three-day vir­tu­al sum­mit known as Sky­scraper™ which will out­line the next steps to the rest of the indus­try.

To reg­is­ter for the remain­ing think tanks, and to watch a record­ing of this dis­cus­sion, vis­it https://www.varonvehicles.com/skyscraper