It might be years before flying cars take to the skies, but designers and engineers are already testing the infrastructure they’ll need to operate.
On the technical side, any vertiport has a few key physical requirements: a stable electric grid for fast recharging, a hangar for maintenance and a system to move vehicles into it, and enough room around the takeoff and landing pad for the aircraft to maneuver. While Urban-Air Port’s design has a moving platform to lift vehicles to the roof of the building, Hermans explains that vertiports will require less clearance than helicopters, which land a lot less vertically than most of us imagine—eVTOLs, by comparison, do, as the name suggests, actually take off vertically. “That allows you, in your vertiport design, to start to integrate them into much denser urban environments where helicopters might not be able to operate,” says Hermans.
While computer renders of vertiports often place them atop buildings, that would require passengers to have access to a lift to the top, and many building managers will not be keen on letting random members of the public inside. Tower rooftops also often house building equipment such as lift mechanisms and air conditioning ducting, leaving a relatively small footprint to place a vertiport. Sure, it might be fine for a single vehicle, but a financially viable vertiport is likely to require space for multiple vehicles.
Though some wealthy private companies may offer their staff rides in air taxis as a perk, Hermans predicts public vertiports are more likely to be sited atop lower buildings, such as car parks—and this is why Sandhu spent three weeks in a Coventry car park next to a train station. “The challenge is getting aircraft into compact, dense locations,” he says—and, crucially, as close as possible to other transport infrastructure.
There’s another reason lower vertiports have merit: They take less time to board. Urban-Air placed its OneAir port in a car park next to a train station to make it faster and easier to access. Had it been on top of a building, passengers would add extra time to their journey. On the other hand, the more centrally located vertiports are, and the lower to the ground they are, the higher the risk of crashes and noise.
That’s the physical side of vertiports. On the passenger side, it’s unclear whether security will be similar to airports or train stations—and reducing time-consuming queues and checks matters for a market that is betting on quick trips. “If you’re spending 10 minutes going through security for a flight that only lasts five minutes, that doesn’t really stack up all that well,” Hermans says.
Of course, airports aren’t just about travel—like it or not they’re about shopping too. To work out how to best make use of the space available, Urban-Air Port worked with duty free experts from Qatar Airways on the design of the retail areas. “The key thing was having brands showcase some of their products in a very small footprint,” Sandhu says.
It may seem a bit early to be fine-tuning space for lattes and retail—after all, none of the eVTOLs are yet approved by regulators, let alone in mass production. But the industry needs to start considering infrastructure before air taxis are ready to fly. “If you make an airplane, you don’t have to worry about where it’s going to go,” says Sergio Cecutta, of transport analyst firm SMG Consulting. “We don’t want to get into a catch-22 situation where there are no vehicles, so there’s no infrastructure. We need to do it at the same time.”
And getting the timing right is no easy task, with “flying car” startups consistently missing their own deadlines. Right now, even aircraft being trialed can’t go into production without regulatory approval—which puts punchy promises of air-taxi services by 2024 firmly in the hands of the US Federal Aviation Administration and the EASA.
SMG Consulting tracks vehicle development, rating Joby and Volocopter as being “highly likely” to hit that deadline; plenty of the other two-dozen rivals on its list aren’t winning quite as much confidence. SMG also tracks infrastructure readiness, but of the five companies it follows, none are expected to have a port before 2024. In short, a lot is going to happen in 2024, or nothing at all. “In 2021, people realized eVTOLS are real,” Cecutta says. “So 2022 will be us realizing we’ve got to start building stuff.”
Plus, the benefit of eVTOLs is that they can land basically anywhere—certainly anywhere a helicopter can. So rather than racing to install vertiports, operators can use existing aviation infrastructure. Lilium vice-chairman Alex Asseily says the company is already considering how its electric aircraft could cover routes in Florida with partner NetJets. That could involve, he says by way of example, a route linking West Palm Beach Airport with an existing urban heliport. “We can land at a standard heliport. The only thing you’d need to add to it would be a charger,” he says.
All the Lilium Jet really needs is a “parking spot” and a charger in order to land, suggesting that installing full vertiports for every destination may be unnecessary in the early stages. “What we’re trying to do is not be restricted, to not be forced to invest huge amounts on day one,” Asseily says. “None of this infrastructure takes a long time to build—building a slab of concrete which an aircraft can land on with a supercharger isn’t easy, but it’s quick.”
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| Photograph: Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg/Getty Images |
On the technical side, any vertiport has a few key physical requirements: a stable electric grid for fast recharging, a hangar for maintenance and a system to move vehicles into it, and enough room around the takeoff and landing pad for the aircraft to maneuver. While Urban-Air Port’s design has a moving platform to lift vehicles to the roof of the building, Hermans explains that vertiports will require less clearance than helicopters, which land a lot less vertically than most of us imagine—eVTOLs, by comparison, do, as the name suggests, actually take off vertically. “That allows you, in your vertiport design, to start to integrate them into much denser urban environments where helicopters might not be able to operate,” says Hermans.
While computer renders of vertiports often place them atop buildings, that would require passengers to have access to a lift to the top, and many building managers will not be keen on letting random members of the public inside. Tower rooftops also often house building equipment such as lift mechanisms and air conditioning ducting, leaving a relatively small footprint to place a vertiport. Sure, it might be fine for a single vehicle, but a financially viable vertiport is likely to require space for multiple vehicles.
Though some wealthy private companies may offer their staff rides in air taxis as a perk, Hermans predicts public vertiports are more likely to be sited atop lower buildings, such as car parks—and this is why Sandhu spent three weeks in a Coventry car park next to a train station. “The challenge is getting aircraft into compact, dense locations,” he says—and, crucially, as close as possible to other transport infrastructure.
There’s another reason lower vertiports have merit: They take less time to board. Urban-Air placed its OneAir port in a car park next to a train station to make it faster and easier to access. Had it been on top of a building, passengers would add extra time to their journey. On the other hand, the more centrally located vertiports are, and the lower to the ground they are, the higher the risk of crashes and noise.
That’s the physical side of vertiports. On the passenger side, it’s unclear whether security will be similar to airports or train stations—and reducing time-consuming queues and checks matters for a market that is betting on quick trips. “If you’re spending 10 minutes going through security for a flight that only lasts five minutes, that doesn’t really stack up all that well,” Hermans says.
Of course, airports aren’t just about travel—like it or not they’re about shopping too. To work out how to best make use of the space available, Urban-Air Port worked with duty free experts from Qatar Airways on the design of the retail areas. “The key thing was having brands showcase some of their products in a very small footprint,” Sandhu says.
It may seem a bit early to be fine-tuning space for lattes and retail—after all, none of the eVTOLs are yet approved by regulators, let alone in mass production. But the industry needs to start considering infrastructure before air taxis are ready to fly. “If you make an airplane, you don’t have to worry about where it’s going to go,” says Sergio Cecutta, of transport analyst firm SMG Consulting. “We don’t want to get into a catch-22 situation where there are no vehicles, so there’s no infrastructure. We need to do it at the same time.”
And getting the timing right is no easy task, with “flying car” startups consistently missing their own deadlines. Right now, even aircraft being trialed can’t go into production without regulatory approval—which puts punchy promises of air-taxi services by 2024 firmly in the hands of the US Federal Aviation Administration and the EASA.
SMG Consulting tracks vehicle development, rating Joby and Volocopter as being “highly likely” to hit that deadline; plenty of the other two-dozen rivals on its list aren’t winning quite as much confidence. SMG also tracks infrastructure readiness, but of the five companies it follows, none are expected to have a port before 2024. In short, a lot is going to happen in 2024, or nothing at all. “In 2021, people realized eVTOLS are real,” Cecutta says. “So 2022 will be us realizing we’ve got to start building stuff.”
Plus, the benefit of eVTOLs is that they can land basically anywhere—certainly anywhere a helicopter can. So rather than racing to install vertiports, operators can use existing aviation infrastructure. Lilium vice-chairman Alex Asseily says the company is already considering how its electric aircraft could cover routes in Florida with partner NetJets. That could involve, he says by way of example, a route linking West Palm Beach Airport with an existing urban heliport. “We can land at a standard heliport. The only thing you’d need to add to it would be a charger,” he says.
All the Lilium Jet really needs is a “parking spot” and a charger in order to land, suggesting that installing full vertiports for every destination may be unnecessary in the early stages. “What we’re trying to do is not be restricted, to not be forced to invest huge amounts on day one,” Asseily says. “None of this infrastructure takes a long time to build—building a slab of concrete which an aircraft can land on with a supercharger isn’t easy, but it’s quick.”
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/flying-cars-ports-design
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