Will Funding, Politics, and Infrastructure Issues Unplug Electric Aviation?

Aviation’s electric propulsion revolution is well underway, but when will it be coming to an airport or community near you as part of an advanced air mobility (AAM) system? 

While there are predictions aplenty, no one knows for sure, due to the daunting technical and political challenges that remain. However, the consensus is that you’ll see smaller electric fixed-wing and electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft service using existing helicopter routes, heliports, vertiports, and airports long before you experience anything resembling an airborne Uber, with ubiquitous rooftop landing pads. The promise of overflying congested ground traffic within, or between, cities with all-electric aircraft still faces major hurdles. 

“For eVTOL to be worth the investment, they need larger-scale operations,” counsels Mike Hirschberg, executive director of the Vertical Flight Society (VFS). “When tens of thousands of people are flying every day in a city, then there will really be a benefit. We’ll see more cities around the world adopt AAM services and those will scale up in terms of the number of cities, vertiports, aircraft, and passengers.” 

In Hirschberg’s opinion, that’s when big savings will kick in. “We know that electric aircraft can be much cheaper to operate than piston- or turbine-powered aircraft, just like an electric car is cheaper to operate than a fuel engine,” he says. “So we think the operations will be cheaper without some of the complex mechanical systems. We think the vehicle will be cheaper to produce.”

In some cases, developers of new aircraft plan on starting with hybrid-electric models that would overcome the range limitations of current battery technology. Other companies, including Airbus, feel that hydrogen is a better long-term fuel source, especially in view of pressure for aviation to reduce its carbon footprint.

Lilium is planning to launch flights in Florida in 2024, with plans for bases in locations such as Orlando. It expects its Lilium Jet to have up to seven seats and be able to fly almost 190 miles.

Multibillion-dollar Investments

So far, almost 400 vehicle designs have been revealed in various states of maturation, from drawings little better than cocktail napkin scrawls to actual flying prototypes. Billions of dollars have been invested by both aviation and automotive heavy hitters, including Airbus, Boeing, Embraer, Bell, General Motors, Hyundai, Stellantis (the new conglomeration of Fiat-Chrysler and Renault), and Toyota. One eVTOL maker alone, Joby Aviation, already has attracted more than $1.6 billion in financing and recently acquired the assets of Elevate, the AAM division of ride-share company Uber. 

In February, Archer announced that United Airlines would acquire up to 200 of its eVTOL aircraft to speed passenger delivery from city centers to airports, a deal that could be worth $1.1 billion.  Separately, both Joby and Archer recently announced plans to go public via mergers with so-called special purpose acquisition companies that would value the start-ups at $6.6 billion and $3.8 billion, respectively. Some studies have predicted the AAM market will be worth a staggering $318 billion by 2040. To put that number in perspective, consider that the global commercial airline market was valued at $802 billion pre-pandemic in 2019. 

Both Joby and Archer have announced that they will have an FAA-certified eVTOL aircraft in service by 2024. The Joby aircraft is designed to fly at up to 200 mph and have a range of 150 miles, while the Archer model will fly at up to 150 mph and have a 60-mile range. Both aircraft are designed to seat four passengers and one pilot. 

With the help of various industry-related groups, the FAA and its European equivalent, EASA, are busy promulgating rules governing the certification standards for these aircraft with a hybrid of requirements for existing light fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. NASA, working with leading academic institutions, continues research into developing low-altitude airspace management for these vehicles that includes deconfliction strategies for sharing that space with unmanned air vehicles. 

Some local and state governments have begun to promote eVTOL technology. In California and its largest city, Los Angeles, both known for hellacious ground vehicle traffic, initiatives are underway. In December 2020, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced a private-public partnership to promote AAM there, saying, “The Urban Air Mobility Partnership will make our city a force for cleaner skies, safer transportation, expanded prosperity, and stunning innovation, and provide a template for how other local governments can take this new technology to even greater heights.” 

Archer announced in February that its aircraft would be providing commercial service in Los Angeles by 2024, and that it has joined Mayor Garcetti’s AAM partnership. Then in March, the company said it also has the support of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez to launch services in the South Florida city. 

European eVTOL aircraft developers Lilium and Volocopter have announced their own plans to launch services in various U.S. locations, including Florida. Plans for AAM services are also taking shape in cities that include Paris and Singapore. 

Joby Aviation is one of several front runners in the race to launch air taxi services with eVTOL aircraft in cities such as Los Angeles.

Winning Public Acceptance

Not all of these projects are sure to succeed, however.

In communities such as Los Angeles and Dallas, where the political leadership already has embraced AAM, much political spade work still remains to build citizen acceptance. In locales like New York, where a growing number of public officials routinely score political points by flogging civil helicopter traffic, the climb may be steep. Gothamites filed more than 7,700 helicopter noise complaints in 2020, double the number lodged in 2019. The New York City Council is considering legislation that would effectively eliminate civil helicopter traffic there, while the new Congress has reintroduced the Improved Helicopter Safety Act, a bill that would do likewise over most major U.S. cities. 

Public education will need to drive AAM policy development, says Yolanka Wulff, co-executive director of the Community Air Mobility Initiative (CAMI), a group dedicated to advancing urban air mobility education. At a VFS workshop earlier this year, Wulff noted that “the industry is making great progress in the technology implementation of these aircraft. 

“We hear time and again that the biggest challenge to implementation is public acceptance,” she added, citing four factors to gaining that acceptance: trust, public benefit, limited adverse impacts, and integration. “Safety is non-negotiable. It isn’t easy to determine what is safe enough. That is primarily up to regulators like the FAA to answer that question. We also have to consider the public perception of safety, which comes from trust. Earning that trust is key to public acceptance.” 

Public benefit is also a big part of the overall equation to laying the groundwork for local approvals. “One of the questions we got early on was whether urban air vehicles were just limousines for the very rich,” Wulff said. “The answer has to be no. AAM uses the third dimension to provide commercial, economically viable transportation for the public. Benefits include workforce and socioeconomic development and emergency services. 

“AAM has the ability to bring broad availability at a reasonable price to the public and a new mode of travel to metropolitan transportation systems,” Wulff added. To that end, AAM needs to be sold as an essential cog in an area’s overall transportation system. “To derive maximum benefit from AAM, it needs to be integrated within the existing transportation landscape within a community. Vertiports need to be strategically located within transportation hubs such as light-rail stations and airports. AAM has to take accessibility and equity considerations into account. And it needs to integrate in a constructive way with existing transit.” 

Strictly speaking, tarring eVTOLs with the same noise brush as helicopter flights is not fair, Hirschberg said. “We know that eVTOL aircraft are inherently quieter than helicopters. We believe because they are quieter, there won’t be as much citizen pushback as there would be with regard to helicopters. The goal of eVTOL developers is to get the noise of the vehicles to blend into the background noise of the environment. However, multiple flights out of vertiports all day, every day, will create a certain amount of visual pollution. But when you look at the benefits that eVTOLs provide a community, when more people start to use them, we think citizens will be more receptive to them.” 

Singapore is one of several international cities identified as a possible early-adopter of eVTOL air taxi services, by companies such as Volocopter, which intends to operate its VoloCity aircraft there.

Expensive Power Demands

But noise may just be the half of it. AAM will require electric power—potentially lots of it—and eventually more than the existing grid can provide. “When you are dealing with recharging a large number of vehicles, the considerations really cascade back to the grid,” said Jesse Bennett, an engineer with the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “The peak power demand is going to result in the need to upgrade a series of equipment on the grid” and on the part of end-users. Bennett said the associated costs even for supporting the charging needs of a handful of small, all-electric commuter aircraft operating from airports would be in the “order of magnitude of millions of dollars. It is really expensive to prepare the grid just to provide the power that you need.”

Expanding the grid creates political problems on several levels. Rex Alexander, president of Five-Alpha, a consultancy that assists clients with navigating heliport and vertiport construction, notes that trying to add electrical infrastructure can create blowback. “The only thing that has a bigger pushback on heliports in the NIMBy [not in my backyard] world is [electrical] substations,” he said. “Nobody wants a substation in their backyard.” Alexander notes that it can take two years to obtain the needed approvals and another two years to build and that there is a shortage of grid components that can add another 12 to 18 months of delay. 

Even without the addition of eVTOL, the power grid is under increasing strain, as more ground vehicles rely on electric power. California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed an executive order that would make the sale of new internal-combustion-engine cars illegal in that state beginning in 2035, the same year that General Motors plans to convert to offering nothing but all-electric vehicles. And new U.S. transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg has already signaled an interest in encouraging advanced air mobility plans as part of the Biden administration’s wider efforts to modernize public transportation and lower carbon emissions.

For now, as eVTOL and electric-powered fixed-wing aircraft are gradually introduced, the politics of accommodating them at airports and existing heliports must also be settled. David Ulane, executive director of Colorado’s division of aeronautics, warns that aviation fuel taxes support these facilities and that diverting this revenue to create additional electric capacity could spark rebellion among current airport users, who would rather see those funds spent on things like runways and lighting. “How do we generate more revenue to support new things without compromising existing funding streams and not alienating our current stakeholders, who may not ever fly an electric aircraft?” he asked. “A lot of these electrical needs are very expensive.” And who pays for them and how remain open questions. 

Editor’s note: For much more on eVTOL and other cutting-edge aviation news, visit BJT sister site FutureFlight.aero.