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Autonomous Vehicles, New Mobility & the Built Environment Electric Vehicles

Distributed Electric Aviation – a New Model of Intercommunity Connection

Front cover of the Distributed Aviation paper from the Advanced Mobility Group.
Front cover of the Distributed Aviation paper from the Advanced Mobility Group.

Electric aviation is more than just cleaner and quieter skies. It has the potential to be a catalyst for both the revitalization of rural towns and outmigration from urban areas. These are a couple of the implications of the recent report, Distributed Aviation – A New Economic Model for Electric Aviation, from the United Kingdom-based, Advanced Air Mobility Group.

One of the contributors to that report, Darrell Swanson of the Swanson Aviation Consultancy, suggests that for this to be truly game-changing

“It cannot be just something for high net worth individuals. The costs need to be reduced to bring it to the masses.”

In that report, 15 potential routes in the U.K. were with driving distances between 200km and 345km were modeled. The modeling included various electric aircraft ranging from four-seat eVTOLs (Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing) to 19-seat electric fixed-wing aircraft.

Possible Removal of Public Service Obligations #

The results point to an estimated annual time savings of 625 years of transit time, as compared to rail and vehicles. This translates into an annual economic reclaim of £198M and 80k tons carbon reduction. Another almost £97M of, what they term “Leveling Up”, economic activity for the South East portion of England through better connectivity. Their modeling suggests the possible removal of the £13M Public Service Obligation (PSO) that is currently needed to subsidize travel to rural airports.

An important assumption in this study is that the electricity sources are renewable. This requires a holistic approach to not only the source of the energy but the entire transportation system from origination to destination, where the vertiports and existing airports are links in a bigger chain. As Swanson points out in the above interview, vehicles that may appear “green” on the surface, such as e-scooters, can actually produce more pollutants than other forms of transport.

Distributed Electric Aviation – 2025 to 2030 – Social Acceptance Is a Must #

Air Transportation in the U.S. per the 2021 NASA Regional Air Mobility report.
Air Transportation in the U.S. per the 2021 NASA Regional Air Mobility report (PDF).

The report predicts that the beginnings of Distributed Aviation in the 2025 to 2030 timeframe. It will take shape in the form of what Swanson terms the eLCCs (Electric Low-Cost Carriers).  In the U.S., evidence of how eLCC’s might operate is given by the recent commitment of United Airlines to work with Archer Aviation and American Airlines partnership with Vertical Aerospace, respectively, to extend air service beyond their hub airports, effectively reducing the terrestrial travel component of a passenger’s journey. NASA’s recent report, Regional Air Mobility, [see Viodi’s overview of that report, here] spells out the U.S. opportunity and the evolution from today’s aviation sector to an integrated, electrified, origination-to-destination solution.

Swanson’s bigger picture view is that “We are reinventing commercial aviation at the sub-regional range.” He sees no significant technical or business barriers in such a rollout. He emphasizes that the biggest challenge will be around social acceptance. Simply, the industry must address noise concerns and ensure that the cost structure is such that it benefits more than just jet setters.

Interview Highlights #

Click on the timecodes below to jump directly to that point in the interview.

00:45 – Swanson provides an overview of the report, as well as how existing low-cost carriers, like Ryanair or EasyJet, are evolving towards smaller aircraft. Over time, these will move to electric aircraft and the improved operational economics will allow the serving of thinner routes. In parallel with some of Swanson’s early thoughts on the topic, then NASA engineer Mark Moore, published his epochal paper, Distributed Aviation Concepts and Technologies, on the potential impact of electric aviation. Another influence was Uber’s 2016 paper, Fast-Forwarding to a Future of On-Demand Urban Air Transportation (PDF).

04:28 – As the costs drop and smaller aircraft make sense, the network becomes more of a point-to-point mesh and less of a traditional hub and spoke. As Swanson points out, in many ways, this points to the 1930s and 1940s, before long-range airplanes, where rural airports served as refueling stops. He indicates a point-to-point network is a win-win-win-win;

  • for the airlines as they will carry passengers for a larger portion of their respective trips
  • smaller airfields will have more air traffic, making them more economically viable compared to today
  • the passengers will save time and money
  • it will have a lower environmental footprint, assuming “green” electricity, as it reduces the terrestrial travel component

08:12 – Swanson explains that his demand modeling assumes a small number,  1 to 2%, of trips.

Rendering of the Bye Aerospace 8-Seat All-electric eFlyer 800.
Rendering of the Bye Aerospace 8-Seat All-electric eFlyer 800. Image courtesy of Bye Aerospace

08:40 – Over time, the lower operating costs will drive new demand. For instance, Bye Aerospace is predicting operating costs for their 7-passenger electric aircraft to be 20% lower than a conventional hydrocarbon-powered plane.

12:47 – In the early years, there will be onboard pilots. Automation Air Traffic Management (ATM) will be phased in and is not anticipated to be ubiquitous until the 2035 to 2040 timeframe (see page 18).  Whether pilots are replaced by robots or a human steward remains to be seen.  The range of the aircraft will be limited by the bladder factor. That is, bathrooms may not be an amenity on many of these short-haul aircraft.

13:17 – A big factor in automating flight will be ensuring that terrestrial transit systems do not become congestion points. This is why it is important to look at the entire system including the end-to-end transit, the interface between the ground and air (e.g. vertiports and airports), and the energy sources and locations for powering the electric aircraft.

14:33 – 47% of the flights in his model are within about 250-miles, while 90% are within 600-miles.

17:04 – Swanson is continuing his research by doing bottoms-up demand modeling capability to understand where the demand for transport is and the modes people currently use. Next, he and his team will use QSI (Quality Service Index) to determine the market share that electric aviation might get. The result will be actionable intelligence giving investors insight on infrastructure and aircraft investments.

20:07 – Currently,there is only about an 11% pairing between airports. Simply, there are many airport pairings that are not profitable. Electric aviation changes the equation.

22:10 – Public Service Obligation flights (subsidized flights to rural, hard-to-reach areas) are likely some of the first places where low-cost electric aviation could find a home. The trial in the Orkney Islands In the UK will be a good proving ground to test some of the assumptions. The U.K. with its UKRI Future Flight Challenge focuses on quantifying the impact of electric aviation of all forms (e.g. passenger, cargo, powerline inspection, etc). This effort is leading to the world’s first vertiport in Conventry, what Hyundai terms the Electric Heartlands.

Swanson explains that he is part of the Skybus project, which is a larger vehicle capable of transporting 30 to 50 passengers. As its name suggests, the concept of this electric vehicle is to bridge the gaps in the London tube system. These gaps result from the radial nature of the London metro rail system and can make for long trips for those in the outer reaches of the rail service who have to travel to another endpoint on the network.

26:33 – An Urban Air Mobility (UAM) solution is a much lower cost than building a new tube. The key to UAM is finding the right airport/vertiport pairs that make the service economically viable.

27:38 – The vertiport should be designed as a multi-use facility to maximize the use of public and other transportation forms, including micromobility. Swanson points to the importance of looking at the lifecycle cost of pollution, particularly the carbon footprint. Doing so has made him rethink some of his assumptions on how to integrate e-scooters as part of an overall multi-modal mobility solution. In this post, the Lufthansa Travel and Mobility Tech Blog ranks major transport modes based on their carbon-emission output and, as Swanson says, dockless e-scooters are not as eco-friendly as commonly thought.

Real versus Perceived Impact #

Lufthansa’s research group makes a strong case that aviation is a carbon emissions scapegoat. Cars are responsible for 81 times as much carbon emissions as the aviation sector in Germany. The media coverage of aviation’s carbon impact was mentioned approximately 40k times more than cars (350k mentions versus 310k mentions for cars).Media coverage of the C02 impact of aviation in Germany

29:23 – Similarly, this sort of total cost of carbon footprint comparison needs to be done for different types of infrastructure (e.g. rail, car, bus).

31:29 – Studying the journey from end-to-end, or origination to destination is important. The first and last mile becomes even more important when the air segment becomes green thanks to its electrification. In the U.S., there are over 5,000 airports representing an enormous number of potential airport pairs. At the same time, the 30 largest hubs account for 70% of all travelers, according to the FAA (see National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems, 2021-2025 PDF). Electric aviation, with its lower operating cost, has the potential to distribute the traffic closer to origination and destination.

33:50 – As we are on the cusp of major changes in aviation, France is banning short-haul flights for those segments shorter than 2 hours and 30 minutes that rail serves. Swanson suggests that this doesn’t necessarily need to happen, as the pollutants from electric aviation should be relatively low, again, assuming sustainable energy sources. Further, electric aviation might even be more efficient than rail on a total infrastructure basis and an origination-destination basis (e.g. electric aviation might prevent a vehicle segment that would be required to get one from a train station to a rural location).

37:39 – There is a question of how aware politicians are of electric aviation progress. It is clear that government agencies, such as NASA, the FAA, and the UKRI, seem to be keeping pace with the rollout of electric aviation. Swanson stresses that the electric aviation industry must be transparent about its progress in addressing noise and reducing costs so that the public and political bodies accept this refined mode of travel.  Swanson emphasizes the importance of groups, such as CAMI in the U.S. and Flight Crowd in Britain, to help gain social acceptance by helping bridge the gap between electric aviation proponents and the rest of society.

References – Further Reading #

  1. Advanced Air Mobility Group’s  Distributed Aviation – A New Economic Model for Electric Aviation
  2. NASA/Mark Moore’s Distributed Aviation Concepts and Technologies
  3. NASA’s Regional Air Mobility
  4. Uber’s Fast-Forwarding to a Future of On-Demand Urban Air Transportation (PDF)
  5. UKRI’s Future Flight Challenge 
  6. FAA’s National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems, 2021-2025 (PDF)

[Disclosure/Disclaimer: The author of this article is an SJC Airport Commissioner. The publication of this article is independent of that role. The article is not intended to reflect endorsement/participation by SJC.]

Author Ken Pyle, Managing Editor

By Ken Pyle, Managing Editor

Ken Pyle is Marketing Director for the Broadband Forum. The mission of this 25+-year-old non-profit “is to unlock the potential for new markets and profitable revenue growth by leveraging new technologies and standards in the home, intelligent small business, and multi-user infrastructure of the broadband network.”

He is also co-founder of Viodi, LLC and Managing Editor of the Viodi View, a publication focused on the rural broadband ecosystem, autonomous vehicles, and electric aviation. He has edited and produced numerous multimedia projects for NTCA, US Telecom and Viodi. Pyle is the producer of Viodi’s Local Content Workshop, the Video Production Crash Course at NAB, as well as ViodiTV. He has been intimately involved in Viodi’s consulting projects and has created processes for clients to use for their PPV and VOD operations, as well authored reports on the independent telco market.

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3 replies on “Distributed Electric Aviation – a New Model of Intercommunity Connection”

Buttressing Swanson’s point about the importance of comparing the total lifecycle carbon emissions of various transportation modes, Oxera recently completed a study suggesting that rail may not always be a better solution. And this analysis appears not to consider the positive potential impacts of electric aviation. Routes Online summarizes the findings at the following link.

https://www.routesonline.com/news/29/breaking-news/297804/modal-shift-study-points-to-complications-in-moving-from-air-to-rail/

[…] For instance, the rural areas between Mankato, MN, St. Cloud, Rochester, and the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport fall well within the 90-mile range (with reserve) of Wisk’s 4-person, Generation 6 aircraft. The drawing below implies a hub-and-spoke approach, whereas, according to work from EAMaven co-founder, Darrell Swanson, aircraft like the Wisk Generation 6, would probably be deployed in more of a point-to-point mesh configuration. […]

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