Q1 2022: eVTOL gaining ground

From a vehicle perspective, “the technology is there”. However, for eVTOL to take off at scale, several other developments must happen, namely in ground infrastructure and airspace technologies, an executive at The Aviary Project told us. “Looking at the airspace side, unmanned traffic management is the new deal,” they added. Shifting to digital will require “all kinds of drones, all kinds of eVTOLs connected to an unmanned traffic management system”. In essence, a radical redesign of airspace as we know it.

Ground infrastructure will be particularly challenging to overhaul, we were told, as real estate development cycles currently take around 20 years. The Aviary Project executive said although companies including Ferrovial, Skyports and Luxaviation are making great strides here, this is where the industry is going to struggle. This is not so much a problem in the US, we heard, due to there being more space available. “But if you look at Europe, if you look at a city like London, there are a lot of ordinances and rules and regulations around modifying existing buildings because of historical value,” the specialist added. “This is going to be a problem, so you need to really look at it on a case-by-case basis.”

Another bottleneck is the time needed for innovation and it is “best to add four or five years” to the timeline of any aerospace project. On that basis, the Aviary Project executive suggested 2025-26 is a reasonable timeline for commercial eVTOL. “If we can add one or two years, two or three years on top of what OEMs give us today, I think that’s a reasonable assumption that that will happen.” Indeed, the mid/late-2020s are expected to be “quite limited in operational scale”, with the expert predicting that only 3-5 companies will achieve certification by 2026. “In select cities, like Singapore and Dubai, perhaps in New Zealand, perhaps in Dallas, Texas, we’re going to have quite limited operations, perhaps 4-5 flights a day, and quite focused on the tourism application.” High-frequency flights between cities are not expected to become the norm until closer to 2030, when the expert sees second-generation eVTOLs coming into play, with greater community acceptance of these vehicles and “a lot of excitement”. 

Clearly, safety and regulatory considerations are paramount and there is naturally significant caution here. A former engineer at Aurora Flight Sciences Corp (Boeing Co) said designing a system that is safe in all potential outcomes is the utmost challenge and what makes eVTOL difficult to certify. Autonomous vehicles are also going to be extremely difficult to certify, as this is not something that is currently done in aviation. The expert added that it will also take time to certify manufacturing lines, which could delay current timelines. An executive at Community Air Mobility Initiative explained that the certification process for an eVTOL aircraft is similar to that of any other aircraft but noted that, as new compliance ground is being broken, we must expect some degree of flexibility. 

Despite the progress to date, the former engineer at Aurora Flight Sciences Corp (Boeing Co) believes it will get harder for future and existing eVTOL companies to acquire capital and thus expects some players to eventually forfeit the race. The market is saturated, they noted, with a couple of players “streets ahead” of the rest. “I expect most of the smaller players are going to drop out in the next 5-10 years, and then, for the big players, I would expect that they continue to get investment primarily from the auto industry.” They noted that there are currently 500-600 eVTOL start-ups and expect consolidation in the years ahead. 

While there is no doubt that we can expect significant transformations to airspace and aircraft in the years ahead, how quickly and to what extent remains to be seen. Although Wisk Aero anticipates close to 14 million annual flights within five years of certifying sixth-generation aircraft, the former engineer at Aurora Flight Sciences Corp (Boeing Co) does not see this as realistic, as “2028 would just barely get you a certified aircraft”. Not only must manufacturing processes be established but, crucially, there has to be a market willing to accept those 14 million flights. “I honestly think that the 14 million flights is not a target projection so much as this is how big the fleet needs to be in order for this business case to close.” They added: “You need to really be at a huge scale for the costs to come down enough that you can have widespread adoption.” They said that 14 million flights and 40 million people would indicate a fleet size of “thousands of aircraft, potentially tens of thousands”.

Ultimately, experts are bullish on the long-term prospects of eVTOL, with an estimated TAM of USD 1trn globally by 2040. “The airline market in 2019 around the world was somewhat more than USD 800bn and eVTOL is going to be bigger than this airline market”, the Aviary Project executive said. “That’s for sure, that’s what I truly believe in.” 

But whether society wants these technologies is open to debate. “The level of acceptance and market penetration I think is a much bigger question than people like to admit on the technical side,” the executive at Community Air Mobility Initiative added. “It’s a much harder one to quantify, because you can lay out your schedule for a technical development road map but public opinion is a whole different beast.”