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What Can You Expect From Electric Air Taxi Services?

eVTOL pioneers say they will compete with ground-based ride-hailing like Uber, but is that realistic?

Charlie Alcock

August 2024

You’ve paid a small fortune to be in the back of that stretch limo. The water you’ve been offered comes from an artisanal spring in France’s Auvergne region and is bottled by monks chanting in Latin. But you’re still the traffic-gridlocked chump trapped like a bug in amber watching a 1992 Ford Taurus edge ahead of you in the crawl to the airport. You’re going to want those monks praying that you don’t miss your flight.

That isn’t text from marketing materials produced by one of the start-ups preparing to launch air taxi services using new eVTOL aircraft, but it very well could be. Electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles have been conceived as congestion-busters, promising a guilt-free way to fly short distances while not spewing excess carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and alienating the masses with the noise from your helicopter.

Frontrunners like Joby and Archer in the U.S. say they will have their four-seat aircraft certified by the FAA around the end of 2024, with deliveries to operators and the launch of taxi flights in select locations from 2025. At least, that’s what they are telling their investors. Many industry observers question whether the regulators will move that fast and whether all the required infrastructure ducks will be in a row. Nonetheless, eVTOLs are coming, and here’s what you can expect from companies also including Supernal, Lilium, Volocopter, Eve Air Mobility, and Vertical Aerospace.

In the on-demand business model, passengers will book seats on phone apps for aircraft departing from whichever of the new vertiports is closest to their current location. This may well require a connecting car journey with a ride-hailing provider like Uber or Lyft that in theory could be arranged via the same app.

How Much Will Rides Cost?

In the early days of eVTOLs, Archer estimates prices will be close to that of Uber Black or Premium rides at maybe $6 per passenger per mile. It says this compares with around $11 in a chartered helicopter but this is based on the assumption all the seats will be filled.

Joby is also targeting pricing comparable to Uber Black and said it is simulating pricing mechanisms to manage supply and demand. The on-demand model hinges on per-seat pricing, meaning that passengers will share the ride with strangers, although Joby said that customers could book multiple seats for small group trips.

As aircraft numbers increase along with competition between service providers, prices could edge closer to Uber X rates at between $2 and $3 per passenger per mile. Archer claims that beyond 2030, they could fall further to undercut privately-owned cars.

Initially, the vertiports may just be repurposed existing heliports already in use by old-school rotorcraft. Ground infrastructure companies such as Skyports and Ferrovial are now investing in plans to develop networks of vertiports in new locations that could include the top floors of parking lots or next to major train stations to provide easier connections between modes of transportation. To be clear, these eVTOLs are not (yet) going to be able to drop you on your front lawn after a night sipping cocktails downtown.

 

eVTOL aircraft like Archer's Midnight will carry four passengers

The vertiports will be fitted with equipment to recharge the batteries of the eVTOL aircraft. Most of the new vehicles are expected to be able to fly several short hops before having to be recharged. Full recharging of battery packs could take around 45 minutes and so the air taxi services will need to manage the availability of aircraft carefully, and perhaps resort to changing out batteries.

Battery Power Constrains Range

Battery capacity is the main limitation on how far the eVTOL aircraft can fly. Generally speaking, the maximum range is capped at around 100 miles, but many of the early air taxi services will be far shorter—more typically 30 or 40 miles tops.

Some of the earliest services are likely to be airport transfers to and from city centers. Archer has a partnership with United Airlines to offer flights from Manhattan to Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and also from downtown Chicago to O’Hare International Airport. Its rival Joby has a similar alliance in the works with Delta Air Lines, promising seven-minute rides to JFK International Airport.

"We are working with Delta to offer the opportunity for their customers to reserve a seat for seamless short-range journeys to and from city airports when booking Delta travel," a Joby spokeswoman explained to BJT. "Booking will also be available directly through Joby's mobile-first app, as well as with other partners such as Uber."

At least for now, eVTOL connections to airports will have to drop off passengers on the groundside, meaning they will still have to endure security screening one way or another. However eVTOL manufacturers and operators have been striking agreements with FBO groups including Atlantic Aviation, Signature, and Clay Lacy. This raises the prospect of business jet passengers being dropped on the apron for immediate boarding if the TSA permits this approach.

In early August, Archer, whose aircraft is called Midnight, revealed a list of planned vertiport locations across the Greater Los Angeles area, confirming ambitions to launch services there in 2026. The sites include Los Angeles International Airport, Orange County, Santa Monica, Hollywood Burbank, Long Beach, and Van Nuys.

The University of California is looking at putting vertiports at existing helipads on its campuses. The Los Angeles Rams NFL team wants to have eVTOL connections between the SoFi stadium and Woodland Hills where it has its practice facility.

What About All My Baggage?

Quite how many linebackers will fit in these compact aircraft remains to be seen. The anticipated maximum payload is expected to be around 1,000 pounds, so taking account of a pilot and four passengers there won’t be much to spare for baggage unless the occupants are ballet dancers or models. Both Joby and Eve Air Mobility, an offshoot of business jet manufacturer Embraer, have said that each eVTOL passenger will be able to take a standard airline carry-on bag and one personal item onboard.

The vision being promised to investors in the eVTOL pioneers is of the electric air taxi services scaling up rapidly so that they are as ubiquitous as Ubers. In reality, the ramp-up will likely be fairly modest and centered on a small number of early adopter cities. Some analysts say a true on-demand business model will not be viable at first because there simply won’t be enough aircraft and vertiports. Instead, flights might run to some kind of schedule between prime locations in what would be more like a shuttle service.

No Pilot Onboard

If you’re reading this in the Chinese city of Shenzhen you may already have had the chance to ride an eVTOL. EHang achieved a world first in October 2023 when the Civil Aviation Administration issued a type certificate for its two-seat EH216-S model. The company does not yet have a license to operate commercial services, but it is being permitted to conduct demonstration flights under a special permit.

What’s more, there is no pilot on board EHang’s fully autonomous aircraft that are controlled via software from a ground-based command center. That’s something that Boeing subsidiary Wisk Aero is striving for in the U.S. by around 2030.

But for now, the eVTOL air taxi business model will require operators to recruit and train large numbers of pilots for aircraft the manufacturers say will be far easier to fly than current equipment. "We will hire commercially-rated pilots [of existing aircraft] who will then complete a transition course to learn how to fly the Joby aircraft, in accordance with FAA regulations," explained Joby's spokeswoman.

Where Will You Be Able to Ride an eVTOL Air Taxi?

Multiple locations are vying to be early adopters of the new aircraft. The frontrunners include the following cities:

·                     Los Angeles

·                     Miami

·                     New York City

·                     Chicago

·                     San Francisco/Silicon Valley

·                     Dubai

·                     Abu Dhabi

·                     São Paulo

·                     Singapore

·                     Tokyo

·                     Shenzhen

·                     Paris

·                     Rome

·                     French Riviera—Cannes, Nice and St Tropez