Uber of the Skies? The Promise of Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing is Here
The ubiquitous ride-share Uber has been frequently used as a metaphor for corporate aviation or a buzz-word description of various charter or fractional programs. With the rapid development of electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL), this term is rapidly gaining relevance as an option for travelers to efficiently reach their destination after landing at airports around the world. Newcomers to aviation, such as Joby and Archer Aviatio,n meet industry powerhouses such as Embraer in the race to bring eVTOL options to market, taking commutes of an hour and reducing them to minutes in congested areas such as Los Angeles and New York.
What is eVTOL?
The eVTOL boom began in earnest in the late 2000s with various government studies into rapid mobility but really gained steam in 2020. In order to promote development in the field, the United States Air Force Research Lab launched Agility Prime in April 2020. This program allowed new entrants to the space access to Air Force and Army research staff and facilities to promote innovation in rapid mobility options. These technologies offer great promise to the military as well as the private sector, with the Army interested in the possibility of unmanned aircraft for cargo resupply and combat search and rescue (CSAR) in places that might endanger a crewed aircraft.
While eVTOL aircraft currently under development vary between crewed and uncrewed, most carry similar configurations. They are all electric-powered with the goal of reducing emissions, though Joby has tested their aircraft using hydrogen fuel cells as well, offering a 500+ mile range with no emissions besides water vapor. Instead of wings, these aircraft are powered by numerous propellers for vertical take-off and landing, with propellers that either tilt for forward flight or an additional propeller for horizontal thrust. In addition to the low carbon output of the aircraft themselves, these provide the benefit of being virtually inaudible at cruise, a benefit to those neighborhoods which will suddenly find themselves being overflown multiple times a day.
Since the launch of this program, airlines around the world have matched the governments’ interest with investments from JetBlue, Delta, United, and American Airlines in various eVTOL programs. United shocked the world with an order of up to 200 Archer Midnight eVTOL aircraft to connect bases such as Newark and Los Angeles International with their downtown destinations, transforming an hour or more commute into a 10-minute flight. While Joby delivered their first production aircraft to the United States Air Force in 2023 as a demonstrator for logistics missions, Delta is a significant investor in the company as well. Both aircraft offer configurations allowing four passengers with a single pilot, unlike other unmanned options, to comply with the requirements of Federal Aviation Regulation Part 135 for Air Carriers.
Threats
With any emergent technology, there are question marks regarding some aspects of the design and theory of the aircraft. As most eVTOL aircraft are intended to fly from large city centers and not necessarily established airfields or runways, they are intended to be navigated by GPS. In a world with ever-increasing levels of GPS interference, it remains to be seen how accurate these GPS will remain when faced with jamming, spoofing, or interference. Uncrewed eVTOLs would seem likely to be particularly vulnerable to jamming or even direct hacking, a concern for passengers or cargo traveling aboard them.
With any new technology, growing pains are inevitable. A spate of accidents in 2019 illustrated the challenges facing an aircraft so reliant on software. A series of three accidents of test eVTOL aircraft from June to October of 2019 from different manufacturers were all blamed on software limitations, resulting in the remote pilot’s inability to recover the aircraft from out-of-tolerance indications. In all three instances the aircraft were either being flown remotely or autonomously with no pilot on board the aircraft.
These incidents show the foresight of investors at Delta and United in retaining a pilot in command of the aircraft when carrying passengers on such new technologies. Having a pilot in the aircraft when a GPS sensor gets confused or the flight control computer starts drifting from a programmed route in the visual flight conditions these aircraft are currently intended to operate will ensure safe resolutions of such malfunctions, much as they do in the aircraft we traditionally travel on today.
eVTOL is Coming, Soon
The emergence of reliable battery power has sparked remarkable growth in the eVTOL sector in a short time. New technologies promise us aircraft on the near horizon which offer incredible time savings to traveling executives. United Airlines partner Archer just delivered its first Air Taxi to the United States Air Force for evaluation as this article was being completed, while simultaneously announcing another order for 116 aircraft from a new eVTOL startup. With significant investment in the industry from around the world (Embraer’s EVE project currently holds the record with nearly 3,000 orders from 13 countries), it will not be long before we see these electric VTOL machines whisking us from Teterboro to Manhattan in a matter of minutes, or from downtown Los Angeles to Van Nuys in time for an early departure home and bypassing the increasingly terrible traffic on the way, giving us back that most valuable of commodities: time.
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