Airborne: Reborn / Volume II / July 17th 2020
This week we take a look at the ‘vertiport’ infrastructure required to support electric air taxis in our Top Story as the sector transitions away from the ‘Urban’ Air Mobility monicker.
An all-electric aeroplane in the UK makes progress on its bid to bring an electric air speed record to Britain, a French hybrid aircraft manufacturer does a deal Stateside and a Slovenian aircraft maker opens up their electric motor technology to OEMs.
We look at a new commercial drone in America, a German drone delivering medical supplies in Scotland and a British brewery delivering beers by UAV in Ohio.
Meanwhile a Disney heavyweight moves into the space tourism arena, a Chinese rocket goes wrong and a stainless-steel starship prepares for its first short flight.
TOP STORY: Spotlight on infrastructure to support electric air taxi operations as eVTOL industry’s vertiport plans start to come together
European air taxi front-runners Lilium unveiled their vision for scalable vertiport infrastructure this week, the big takeaways being that they:
Expect developers to build vertiports for them
Forecast costs ranging from €1-15m
Will require a broad network of partners to make them work, providing everything from charging and cleaning to Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) / Air Traffic Control (ATC) services
Lilium’s vision is quite different to that of US competitor Beta Technologies whose modular prototype charging stations for their stunning Alia aircraft (see this Wired article) are containerised and even envision making use of recycled electric car batteries to enable off-grid charging (founder Kyle Clark gives an in-depth video tour here).
Uber’s Elevate team have been evolving their common standards for vertiport infrastructure on the Uber Air network since at least 2016 (when they published this whitepaper) together with their commercial partners (which notably exclude both Lilium and Beta). We can’t help but notice however that since the ride-sharing giant laid off huge numbers of workers this year the Elevate division has been very quiet indeed. We’ve seen rumours on social media that it might be axed completely as part of a wider rationalisation plan.
Head of Product for Uber Air Nikhil Goel was quoted in this July 9th Robb Report article so we hope that’s a sign the rumours aren’t true. In it there’s evidence the company has learned from missteps in ridesharing rollout that ignored and angered communities around the world, Goel asserting that:
Any new Skyport will go through an intense community review process. We need to prove it will have minimal impact.
The article also mentions Massachusetts-based Transcend Air’s plans for waterside landing infrastructure - an idea that’s worked for helipads in New York and London for years. We’re not sure we’d shell out the $283 they’re asking for a 36-minute flight from NYC to Boston just yet though, as they don’t plan to fly before 2025!
Has Covid-19 killed the ‘Urban’ in Urban Air Mobility? As Aviation Week reported US regulator the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has started talking about ‘Advanced Air Mobility’ - a nomenclature we’ve adopted ourselves. German eVTOL unicorn Lilium now talk about ‘Regional Air Mobility’. With cities now largely devoid of the congestion many promised air taxis would help overcome, the language around this next generation of flying vehicles is changing as they adapt to the tectonic shifts in human behaviour caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Notoriously tight-lipped Lilium made a rare public announcement regarding their supply chain, announcing a deal that will see Japan’s Toray Industries supply the company with carbon fibre composites for manufacture of their Lilium Jet eVTOL aircraft. Toray notably also supply composites to Boeing for their 787 Dreamliner (via Lilium).
Fellow German eVTOL manufacturers Volocopter announced Arnaud Coville as their new CTO after incumbent Jan-Hendrik Boelens left the company (via Volocopter).
Japan’s SkyDrive announced that it would conduct a public test flight of a single-seat, manned version of their unnamed battery-electric ‘flying car’ this August (via Flight Global).
Alaka’i Technologies announced some revised (and more realistic) timelines for first manned flights of their hydrogen-electric hybrid Skai multicopter - they’re now looking at first manned flights in 2021 and are reckoned to “be about two years into what’s typically a five-year process [of certification] with the FAA” according to a report by New Atlas.
French company VoltAero’s 4-10 seater hybrid-electric Cassio aircraft is set to be available on a US air taxi app being developed by KinectAir. The aircraft’s 800 mile / 1,300km range could prove very enticing when it comes into service in late 2022. The company is headed by former Airbus CTO Jean Botti (via Aerospace Testing International).
Electric aircraft developer Bye Aerospace closed a $10m funding round to continue work on their two- and four-seat prototype eFlyer aircraft demonstrators (via AIN Online).
Rolls-Royce’s Chief Test Pilot Phil O’Dell (and good friend of the team) is rumoured to be on a strict diet in preparation for squeezing into the cockpit of British start-up Electroflight’s ACCEL NXT aircraft in a bid to bring the electric air speed record to the UK. German Walter Extra currently holds the honours having piloted a modified version of his award-winning aerobatic aircraft that bears his name to 210mph. The British challenger is expected to achieve over 300mph, powered by some 6,000 lithium-ion cells (via Kitplanes).
Not content with achieving the first ever EASA type certification for an all-electric aircraft with their Velis Electro trainer Pipistrel this week went one step further, making the aircraft’s liquid-cooled permanent magnet 57.6kW / 77hp E-811 electric motor available to OEMs (via Pipistrel).
The US Department of Defence (DoD) revealed it would be investing over $13m USD in five companies (Airmap, ModalAI, Skydio, Graffiti Enterprises and Obsidian Sensors) using funds appropriated through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, to “support the domestic small unmanned aerial system (sUAS) industrial base” (via Drone Life).
One of the companies benefitting from the aforementioned DoD cash - Skydio - unveiled their first commercial drone offering, the X2 drone, off the back of closing a $100m Series C funding round led by Next 47 with Levitate Capital and NTT DOCOMO Ventures also participating. The company stands to benefit from US public contracts as the nation increasingly prohibits use of Chinese market leader DJI’s drones by government agencies (via TechCrunch).
Scotland’s BrewDog unveiled plans to start testing socially-distanced deliveries of beer by drone this month to locations on their 42-acre campus in Columbus, Ohio (via Beverage Daily).
London-headquartered drone delivery service provider (and vertiport developer) Skyports secured funding to transport medical supplies and samples for the British National Health Service (NHS) in Scotland using drones from Germany’s Wingcopter. The money comes as part of a UK Space Agency and European Space Agency (ESA) collaboration that sought space-enabled technology solutions to combat coronavirus. The project sees them partnering with Vodafone for 4G communications. The company released time-lapse footage of their drones flying to remote Scottish island locations on Twitter, that’s well worth a watch.
Alternative Global India looks set to commence the country’s first Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone trials with delivery-service partner Dunzo Digital, as reported by India Education Diary.
China suffered their third launch failure of the year on July 10th as the Kuaizhou-11 solid rocket was lost along with its two satellite payload for customers Bilibili - a Chinese video sharing site - and Chang Guang Satellite - a geospatial data company spun out from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (via Space News).
Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides stepped down from the role after a 10-year tenure at the space tourism company. Ex-Disney exec Michael Colglazier will replace him with Whitesides transitioning to the role of Chief Space Officer. The company’s stock (NYSE:SPCE) popped as much as 15% on news of the announcement (via The Motley Fool).
SpaceX is readying the fifth prototype of their stainless steel Starship for static-fire testing this weekend at their rapidly expanding facility in Boca Chica, Texas. A long-awaited 150m hop-test flight (if all goes well) could follow as early as next week. One of the company’s new Raptor engines has been mounted to the test article in preparation (via NasaSpaceFlight.com).
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