At last, flying taxis have arrived and are set to transform the way we travel.
Or at least that’s what we’re being told to think.
We’ve seen countless articles saying that it won’t be long before we’re all whizzing
around in these oversized drones and that we should all be buzzing with excitement.
But before you all start thinking this video is doing the exact same thing,
we’re actually here with a reality check.
Yes, there have been some incredible breakthroughs with the technology recently,
and several companies have come up with their own amazing aircraft, which do work.
But of all the challenges yet to be tackled before these become a common sight in our skies,
there’s one that stands out above the rest - where are they going to take off and land?
If we don’t have the infrastructure in place then
it’s quite simple really - this whole idea will never get off the ground.
Before we properly investigate where we are with this infrastructure, let’s take a step back.
First of all, what exactly are these vehicles?
You might have heard them described as flying cars or air taxis, but the proper,
nerdy term for them is eVTOLs, which stands for Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing.
There are loads of shapes and sizes and they all come under
a new category of transport known as Urban Air Mobility.
These aren’t just fancy helicopters - they’re much quieter than your average chopper,
multiple rotors make them more manoeuvrable and safer and because they’re electrified,
they’re cleaner and cheaper to run too.
This all sounds great, but what about that ground infrastructure? What will be the equivalent of
an airport or metro station? Well, there is one short-term solution that springs to mind.
Because of the similarities with helicopters, what’s wrong with just using helipads?
It’s an idea that makes sense to begin with, and some vehicle makers do plan to use them,
but it won’t be enough if this is to become a mode of transport for the masses.
Helipads aren’t exactly everywhere, there’s nowhere to charge the aircraft and at the
moment they’re only available to those who can afford them.
“That's what helicopters have done for decades - serving just a few who can pay for that service.
Urban mobility has a totally different purpose. It's a purpose of serving everyone.”
Felipe Varon is CEO and founder of urban air mobility company Varon Vehicles.
He thinks helipads aren’t really a long-term fix.
“The platforms are different, the housing and what happens inside the vertiport has
a completely different purpose and the type of customers that we're serving are different.”
Now, before we come on to these vertiports,
are there any other kinds of existing infrastructure that could work for air taxis?
Well, another quick win could be to integrate airports into
the system - particularly those that are underused.
One of the leaders in urban air mobility, Wisk,
published a whole white paper on this in September 2021.
It says there are over 5,000 public airports in the US,
located on average 20 minutes by car from anywhere in the country.
The land is already used for aviation and there’s existing infrastructure for passenger services,
as well as air traffic control and flight paths.
But not every country has an airport network like the US, and while this sounds like a good
next step when you’ve just got off a flight, what if you want to then head to a city centre?
Where do you land at the other end if you can’t use helipads?
Parking real estate firm REEF Technology has teamed up with two air taxi developers
to turn some of its garage rooftops into landing sites, starting in LA and Miami.
“Parking lots seem like an obvious example because they’re large and have a big roof. And if you can
release some of that parking capacity from the rooftop to land eVTOLs, that's great.”
Ricky Sandhu is the boss of Urban-Air Port,
which has developed its own idea for flying taxi and drone infrastructure.
We're going to come on to that in a minute.
“But you also have to consider - does that parking lot have the structural integrity to
receive these vehicles, does that parking lot have the right access for people to get up and down?
Does it have enough lifts and stairs? Does that parking lot have enough energy connectivity
and capacity to provide the electric charging that these vehicles will need?”
What we’re really going to need then is purpose-built facilities designed solely for these
aircraft, rather than just building onto what’s already there. So, what might these look like?
In 2019 a proof-of-concept for the world’s first passenger
vertiport was unveiled in Marina Bay, Singapore.
The VoloPort would provide charging facilities, cater for a range of vehicle and passenger types
and its modular design means it can be adapted for different sites.
A collaboration between Skyports and German air taxi firm Volocopter,
the aim is to have a network across the city-state.
Services could start running as soon as 2023, although this is likely to be
just one vertiport for tourism purposes, with a proper network in place by 2026.
Then there’s Urban Air-Port, which is developing these modular hubs for air taxis and cargo drones,
designed to integrate with other ground infrastructure on land and water.
“We're approaching the infrastructure challenge with a very compact,
deployable solution that can be used in new areas that would never, ever have been thought
of being possible to use, but also can be added to existing infrastructure in a sustainable way.”
They’re easy to set up and move and can be used in remote locations and even disaster zones,
which could become more common in future because of climate change.
“It's built from a kit of parts, which means we can actually start to
serve that demand and solve some of those problems that we see are going to be coming.”
The first one will be unveiled in Coventry, UK in 2022.
It also has a partnership with Hyundai on the vehicle side and plans to build
hundreds of sites over the next five years.
Varon Vehicles has chosen Latin America, and Colombia in particular, to launch its new
urban mobility system, in conjunction with the local civil aviation authority.
Why did Varon choose to begin here,
and why would a developing nation like this want to get involved?
“They have one underlying reason, and it's the lack of proper mobility infrastructure.
Governments’ systematic incapability to provide the proper mobility
infrastructure needed for cities to grow and expand, and for there to be proper
socioeconomic development by connectivity of different regions and so on.
We chose to start in Colombia because here that problem is much more prevalent.”
Instead of providing either the vehicles or the infrastructure like others are doing,
Varon plans to offer a complete urban air mobility package made up of several components.
“The first one is the fleets of aircraft. The second component is
the aerospace architecture - those virtual lanes up in the air in low-altitude skies
that will connect our vertiports, and that's the third component - the vertiports.”
These virtual lanes would be reserved just for eVTOLs,
so there’s no need to worry about clashing with other aircraft.
Each route would be carefully defined, sticking to low altitudes and avoiding no-fly zones,
critical infrastructure or places with difficult wind conditions or terrain.
But the big question is when will we actually see eVTOLs in widespread use across our cities?
Ricky predicts they will become more noticeable over the next few years,
but it could be a while before we see proper passenger services because
vehicle companies are yet to achieve the right certification.
“I believe by 2025 will be will be a lot more familiar with seeing air taxis and eVTOLs in
our skies, whether it's from the continued demonstrations or piloted tests and demos
to actual, real services with cargo drones bringing your packages to a nearby location.”
“It's not going to happen overnight. It's going to be a gradual thing. We're going to see
local operations first, very confined, short distance, low-range type of operations.
Inside an existing urban structure, that's a tremendously dense environment in many ways,
both environmental, wind related conditions and not to mention physical structures.
That's going to happen way, way beyond a decade from now.”
So, it’ll be a while before our cities are swarming with air taxis, and there are no
guarantees it's going to happen on the scale many of us imagine, but we are getting closer.
With the infrastructure now finally catching up with the vehicles themselves,
maybe it is time to get excited about this new form of mobility,
while also keeping our feet firmly on the ground for now.
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