The Air MaaS Solution #CES2020

Bell continues demonstrating progress in its journey to create a new mode of affordable, inter-city travel with its introduction of the Bell Nexus 4EX and Bel AerOS. The Bell Nexus 4EX features 4 ducted fans, electric power (although it can be configured for hybrid-electric configuration for longer range), and five seats. In the above interview, Naveed Siddiqui, Technology Partner for Bell Innovation, indicates that today the electric version provides 60 miles of range, perfect for many urban inter-city applications.

Highlights of the above interview #

• 01:02 – Challenges of catchment, landing, and taking-off
• 02:21 – What are some of the use-cases?
• 02:59 – An overview of the Bell Nexus 4EX – in service between 2025 & 2030
• 04:01 – Engagement with cities and their concerns
• 05:32 – A shared air mobility as a service approach
• 05:58 – The Bell platform
• 06:29 – What about visual pollution?
• 07:35 – What about fast charging to maximize utilization?

Beyond hardware, Siddiqui emphasizes that a systematic approach is necessary to coordinate the entire journey from the integration of ground transportation networks, to mobility centers to traffic control and in-flight communications. Bell AerOS is the backend that will serve as a cloud-based (Microsoft Azure) operating system “to manage fleet information, observe aircraft health, and manage throughput of goods, products and predictive data and maintenance.” In a sense Bell AerOS will be the brains that will allow an operator to manage an aerial transportation fleet.

Siddiqui echoes the CES2020 Solving for City Infrastructure (YouTube) panel which emphasized the importance of private-public partnerships in understanding how this 3^rd dimension Mobility as a Service fits within individual communities and regions and the role it plays in the evolution of so-called smart-cities.

The composition of the panel reflected this theme of collaboration, as it featured the respective mayors of Arlington and Fort Worth, Texas, an executive from DFW, the world’s 4^th busiest airport, and an executive from Hillwood, which is the private entity that runs the public-private Fort Worth Alliance Airport (AFW) and which bills itself as the world’s first industrial airport.

AFW  is tied into the 26,000-acre AllianceTexas master-planned community, which features the AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone. The AllianceTexas MIZ is a sandbox for testing new ways to transport goods and people, both on the ground (e.g. autonomous trucks) and in the air (e.g. drones).

With Bell headquartered in Fort Worth, along with willing government and private partners, the 7+ million population Dallas-Fort Worth area is establishing itself as a testbed for Bell’s ambition of providing an affordable alternative to ground-based regional transportation.

And although pricing is not provided for the Bell Nexus 4EX or the associated cost of mobility, Viodi’s recent look at the economics of electric airplanes suggests certain use-cases, such as high-speed transportation from the high-cost Silicon Valley to California’s Central Valley, could already be more economical than land-based alternatives.

To reach the long-term goal where aerial transportation can start to significantly remove traffic from city streets, new transit hubs will be needed. Bell envisions these to be mobility centers that integrate multiple modes of transportation, from scooters to electric bikes to car to air taxis. Because of the vertical take-off and landing capabilities of their aircraft, Bell envisions these mobility centers as integrating with existing land-use and not requiring the segregated and massive fields of an airport.

Both Siddiqui and the panel emphasize the rollout will be in stages and that the first commercial use-cases could begin as soon as the mid-20s. These first flights will be piloted and probably be on routes with proven demand using existing airport facilities, such as AFW to DFW.

Speaking on the panel, Russell Laughlin, EVP of Hillwood, predicted that by 2035 to 2040 the network becomes scalable and that wide-scale transportation moves into the third dimension. As he stated on the panel, the multi-dimensional nature of airspace offers enormous capacity, particularly if it is used for shared mobility, like Bell envisions, and not the single occupancy vehicle domination of terrestrial travel.

Laughlin emphasized that the earth-based infrastructure and communications networks will have to keep pace. As would be expected, the panelists discussed the role of 5G networks in such an environment [One has to wonder whether a land-based 5G network could handle hand-offs at the speed of an air taxi and whether a low earth orbit space-based network, such as SpaceX’s Starlink, might be a more effective communications method, but those are questions for a future article].

Safety, low carbon footprint and low noise are attributes that are inherent in both the Bell Nexus and Bell APT (Autonomous Pod Transport) vehicles. Both Siddiqui and the panel emphasize the importance of working with local public officials as well as the general public to create, as Princeton’s Dr. Kornhauser would say, a welcoming environment for this new form of inter-city transportation.