Hard questions for the eVTOL community at Revolution.aero London

The 2024 London edition of the Revolution.aero conference took place on June 18-19 at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington.

The event gathered quite a few leaders and a broad cross-sectionof what has come to be known as the Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) industry.

If you follow this segment of the aviation industry regularly, you may have been exposed to a fair share of hype and triumphal press releases. To be fair, there is plenty to be enthusiastic about this nascent segment of the aviation industry and from this pages we keep a moderately optimistic view of it.

However, if there’s something I would highlight of this edition of Revolution.aero is that it offered a more nuanced, more realistic if you wish, view of the perspectives the advanced air mobility industry faces, perhaps because there was no shortage of financiers and venture capitalists that want to see some hard data before putting skin in the game.

Take the debate about eVTOL landing fees, for example, which I think epithomized one of the main themes of the conference.

Following a presentation by Nikhil Goel, Archer’s CCO, a venture capitalist in one of the panels questioned the soundness of some of the hypotheses in Archer’s business model, namely the assumption that it will be able to provide service in places like New York for prices as low as $50 per passenger per ride.

“Landing fees alone are well above $40!” said one of the venture capitalists. Others joined the debate, pointing out that helicopter landing fees in Manhattan, for example can be in the order of $250 to $450, not to mention other associated costs, like parking, which can run at about $250 per hour.

Goel, in turn, pointed out that Archer (because of the different operational and noise profile of its aircraft) anticipated the expansion in the number of potential landing spots, including rooftops in commercial buildings, driving costs down.

A representative from CityAirbus, the eVTOL arm of the European aircraft manufacturer spoke prudently about the costs matter, admitting there are still many unknowns. Airbus, she said was focusing on making the aircraft a safe and viable from a technical point of view. She also pointed out that Airbus, as a leading aerospace manufacturer, could not ignore this innovation wave.

In this regard, an internal event poll showed that most attendees are convinced we’ll see consolidation within the next 18 months, with perhaps established OEMs acting as acquirers in order to secure a spot in this segment if and when it finally takes off.

Nevertheless, it was noted, even if the business case for eVTOLs proves to be sound, the inability to address some of these inconsistencies head on can result in a loss of credibility on the side of the financial community.

One point on which there seemed to be some consensus is that the Middle East is likely to be one of the first focal points of the industry. Not really a surprise for those of us that attended the Future Aviation Forum in Saudi Arabia!

But it was not all about eVTOLs at Revolution.aero, there were also panels for electric and hybrid regional air mobility, including fixed wing and conventional take-off and landing electric and hybrid projects, such as Eviation, ELECTRON and Heart Aerospace.

Darrell Swanson and Jarek Zych, of advanced air mobility consultancy firm EAMaven showed, for example, the potential benefits to the British economy of the establishment of a UK-wide route network (the Highlands and Islands of Scotland would benefit the most, apparently). Interestingly, and according to EAMaven’s calculations, the positive economic impact at a regional level would be double that of the purely urban one (£1.2B vs £615M).

In this regard, another conference take-away is the realization that advanced air mobility will be competing mostly with land transportation. As such, it can play a role in decarbonization, but perhaps not by making a dent on aviation’s current carbon footprint.

The conference was well attended also by representatives of the broader ecosystem, including some that had come from as far away as Australia, like Electro.aero, a company that builds charging infrastructure for electric aircraft.

Hyrdrogen propulsion was representented in one of the panels by Jenny Kavanagh, of Cranfield Aerospace Solutions, who was a guest of the podcast some time ago.

There was also some time for another interesting segment that is currently seeing a renaissance of sorts thanks to the cost-reduction hopes brought about by electric propulsion: seaplanes (with participation of two other previous guests of the podcast, Eric Litun of Elfly and George Alafinov of Jekta as well as James Labouchere, of Ocean Aircraft, another interesting seaplane startup which I had the chance to learn about during the recent Future Opportunities for Seaplanes and Amphibious Aviation (FOSAA) conference in Venice.

So, in short, spirits remain high in the advanced air mobility industry, although some doses of hard realism is starting to trickle in!

Overall, I think it is great to be able to count on a high level forum such as Revolution.aero, where industry insiders do not hesitate to speak their mind and where the entrepreneurs that are driving this industry forward are also able to engage with criticism and address all relevant points.