Aerial Plumbing - Avoiding The Plague Of Slow Growth
Drones, Flying Cars & Property Owners - Incentive Alignment
Thank you to everyone for reading and your support this week has been greatly appreciated, lots of super introductions and people looking to find out we can change the world through urban air mobility. Enjoy this week’s article, jonathan@sky.trade
“Fast charging is critical to ensure rapid turnaround times between flights. A widespread, fast charging system is critical to ensuring electric air taxis reach scale.” - Adam Goldstein, CEO Archer Aviation
This is a true statement, but history has shown us that the people who are building the machines are not the ones to build the network. Incentives don’t align for eVTOL and drone companies to build the decentralized physical infrastructure for urban air mobility in our communities.
Flying Car Charging
Beta Technologies has installed several of its fast chargers at Archer Aviation’s test facility in California for Archer to use during the testing of its eVTOL aircraft. Archer Aviation has purchased several units of Beta’s “interoperable and multimodal” charge cube system, which employs the Combined Charging Standard (CCS) used by manufacturers in the electric aviation industry. Two of the cubes and several of Beta’s mini cubes are in use at Archer’s flight test facility.
Beta’s charging systems are already in use at 14 locations in the USA and development work is underway to install them at another 55 uninspiring airport and heliport locations.
The goal of Beta and Archer’s partnership is to spur the widespread roll-out of an electric charging network and support the broad electrification of flying vehicles. CCS is a General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) endorsed standard that comes with peer-reviewed and global certification standards and is harmonized with EUROCAE ED-308.
The partnership with Archer further expands Beta’s patchy electric aviation charging on the West Coast, following several installations on the East Coast, mainly at existing airports.
Battery-Powered Jobs
The Hyundai Motor Group, whose previous COO is now the current administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), is ranked as the world's third-largest automaker and has revealed plans to establish a U.S.-based manufacturing facility. This facility will be dedicated to producing electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles. Supernal, Hyundai's Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) company, is spearheading the development of eVTOL vehicles.
The company is set to unveil its latest concept at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2024, aiming for a test flight in December 2024 and potential commercial service four years later.
Batteries pose a significant challenge, constituting up to 40% of the eVTOL's weight, according to Supernal. Hyundai Motor, Kia Corp, and Hyundai Mobis have collectively invested $916 million in Supernal since its establishment in 2021.
Supernal is working towards FAA certification and flight testing in 2024 if they can meet with the new Boss.
Japanese Developments
Japanese eVTOL manufacturer SkyDrive and Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) have collaborated to develop electric charging facilities tailored for eVTOLs. The facilities are set to be deployed in Osaka, Kansai and will play a pivotal role in the World Expo 2025.
SkyDrive focuses on creating affordable eVTOLs for daily mass transportation. The joint venture with KEPCO stems from a 2022 agreement to drive the development of advanced charging facilities which are a crucial part of the equation for the practical deployment of flying cars. As crucial as the chargers themselves are where they are placed and on whose land.
These charging areas boast rapid charging capabilities, minimizing turnaround times and ensuring efficient operations. People of course will be comparing the charging times to refuel times of commercial planes, which for short journeys can be as little as 20 minutes. The initial facilities will support a test flight program, with further installations planned for the Expo 2025 vertiport on Yumeshima Island.
Physical Infrastructure Is Bottoms Up
Creating facilities that can charge drones and eVTOL is vital as can be seen by the less-than-optimal charging facilities for electric cars that are a plague of our times.
The current state of electric car charging appears to be the best that the industry has been able to offer and it isn’t good. The promise of working, fast charging stations on every street is many moons away, so how can we avoid this fate for eVTOL and drones?
The current physical infrastructure is not good enough. A gas station or your home seems to be the only real option for electric cars. This ties you considerably to existing infrastructure and reduces your range, and the existing infrastructure owners’ capacity issues and financial constraints have a direct negative impact on our lives. If we were to follow the same path for air mobility the only charging stations for drones and eVTOL would be at airports and large shopping malls or car lots, and that would rule out proper scale and usability.
Private property owners opening up their airspace and land, offering facilities, charging stations, maintenance facilities and restocking hubs will lead to a strong physical network. Coupled with this, these owners control the airspace that drones and eVTOL need to fly in. This brings the prize of permission to be in private airspace for the urban air mobility industry. It will boost incomes, and GDP, and deliver a transportation system that can positively impact people’s lives.
To be successful and advance with new modes of transportation requires new ways of thinking, or we’re just going to end up with faster horses drinking their battery juice at the same old inns and paying the same old innkeepers their inflated prices for it.
BTW, I don't get the whole battery-powered-flying-car thing.
Batteries are heavy. This is a lot less tolerable in a flying vehicle than a terrestrial one.