Airbus XO, the company’s innovation group, revealed a concept for “seamless, multi-modal, fully electric urban mobility.” The modular Pop.Up concept features a capsule that connects to either a ground or air module. Airbus envisions the system relying on an artificial intelligence system where the “passengers plan their journey and book their trip via an easy-to-use app.
Twenty years ago, in the March/April 1997 issue of Vertiflite, I published my first article. The 20-page “V/STOL: The First Half- Century” included the wheel of “V/STOL Aircraft and Propulsion Concepts,” which can now be found on the AHS Vertipedia site at www.vtol.org/wheel.
The article and the V/STOL Wheel catalogued the most prominent attempts to combine the vertical takeoff and landing capabilities of a helicopter with the high-speed forward flight of a fixed- wing aircraft.
An aviation gold rush is on. The belief that advances in electric propulsion and autonomy technologies are making cheap, quiet and even fully automated air taxis as feasible as automatic elevators is fueling a frenzy of design and development of small electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. Some e-VTOLs are already flying. Others will be soon. Many more are on the drawing boards.
Pure electric propulsion isn’t the only route to aeronautical revolution — and maybe not the fastest. Aurora Flight Sciences is working to prove that with its avant-garde LightningStrike, a hybrid-electric technology demonstrator that the Manassas, Virginia, company is building under an $89M Phase II Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract. “People are nibbling around the edges of what electric can do,” said John Langford, Aurora’s founder and chief executive officer. “This airplane drives directly to the heart. It transforms the whole configuration of the airplane.”
The hurdles are high and there is ample reason for skepticism, but tech entrepreneurs are pushing electric aircraft ideas that could lead to a new era for vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, aka VTOLs (pronounced VEE-talls). The latest entrant is Uber Technologies, the $68B cell phone app rent-a-ride provider, which recently announced it will invest in and promote “on-demand aviation.” Uber’s vision — shared by a growing number of aviation experts — is to use electric-powered VTOL (e-VTOL) aircraft as “air taxis” to revolutionize transport in and around big cities.
The third annual Joint Workshop on Transformative Vertical Flight Concepts, with the subtitle of “Enabling New Flight Concepts through Novel Propulsion and Energy Architectures,” was held on Sept. 29-30 in Hartford, Connecticut. The workshop series has brought together vehicle developers, technology companies, government scientists and regulators, investors, and potential electric VTOL customers/operators
With rotors, ducted fans and other lift devices powered through wires, Distributed Electric Propulsion (DEP) can change the shape and performance of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft of many sizes. Advanced Aircraft Company’s (AAC) 36 lb (16.3 kg) Hercules unmanned aircraft system (UAS) has a hybrid-power gasoline engine and generator set driving eight outrigger motors with propellers for hover and forward flight.
On Oct 27, 2016, Uber released its landmark Uber Elevate White Paper: Fast-Forwarding to a Future of On-Demand Urban Air Transportation." AHS — The Vertical Flight Society consulted on the white paper and is cited on page 9 under "Contributors and Reviewers."
During the AHS-sponsored reception, Nikhil Goel, a product manager of special projects at Uber Technologies, commented on Uber's plans for moving urban transportation to the skies with electric VTOL. A transcription follows:
At Uber, we are super obsessed with cities, improving cities, unlocking their immense value through urban mobility.And to us urban mobility means a couple of things. One, it means cutting congestion. It means eliminating parking, which can take up to a third of urban real estate, and dramatically reducing pollution.
In an onstage interview with me today at the Nantucket Conference, Uber products head Jeff Holden said the fast-growing ride sharing company was seriously looking at a new form of transportation to offer its customers: Short-haul flying in cities.
