Production rates and unit costs are the combined hidden red flag for the success of UAM. Beneath the many discussions of consumer adoption, infrastructure and battery technology as challenges for success in the industry lies the sleeping giant of the production rates being mentioned in investor decks. Producing complex aerostructures with the requisite airworthy quality levels at the rates being quoted to investors and the public is a significant challenge that current aerospace production processes cannot easily fulfil.
With the level of capital flowing into the market, investors would be wise to check the aerospace credentials and the plans of the OEMs to make sure that there is a concrete roadmap to serial production at the rates being proposed. There has already been one casualty of this with Lilium recently being subject to a report highlighting their over-ambitious plans that sent their share price plummeting.
A solution is digital automation, that combines the cost savings and reliability of traditional automation with new digital technology that allows for multiple components to be produced using the same production line, alongside digital inspection. In a recent presentation to eVTOL insights, I outlined the reason why the challenge represents such a barrier, why digital automation is a solution, and why it is important to consider it as a key factor now as opposed to waiting until production starts to ramp up. In this blog post, I summarise the key points from the presentation.
Production rates and costs
The figures from investor decks of a selection of the current favourites in the race to commercial use tell an interesting story. The combination of high production rates with low unit prices highlight an assumption that economies of scale will be leveraged. Current aerospace composites manufacturing is either manual, or automated for low production rates of large components. Neither of these are scalable, and therefore a step change in technology is required for these quoted figures to be achievable.
Criticality of Challenges:
A huge number of challenges face the industry, many of which are seen as current existential challenges to the industry as a whole to move on to the next stage of development. As the industry moves from the initial conceptual development phase into prototyping and on to certification, the absolute barriers to progress are capital investment and legislation. Differentiation is also becoming key as the market becomes saturated with OEMs , which will dilute the investment pool. Until aircraft are certified and production begins to ramp up, the unit cost and production scale figures in pitch decks will remain a future problem.
The problem of leaving cost and scale to the last minute:
There are multiple problems with leaving these challenges to the start of production. In itself, lead times of development and qualification to aerospace standards of complex automated production systems for can extend into several years. The complexity of eVTOL airframes, often with distributed propulsion that can also pivot from vertical to horizontal flight, will make components and assemblies more difficult to manufacture. Without considering what automation technology will be used to manufacture the components, the end design may be inefficient, if not impossible, to manufacture at scale. Furthermore, with new propulsion methods comes the potential requirement for new materials. These will need to be qualified, and may require different automated processes to be developed.
With these points in mind, to achieve the tight roadmap for certification and start of production being mentioned by many OEMs, it becomes clear that automated production must be considered now. Waiting until after certification will be too late.
Existing Automotive or Aerospace technology needs updating
Automotive production technology is focused on producing the same component at very high rates (100,000s), whilst aerospace production is focused on high quality, larger components and lower rates (100s). UAM sits somewhere in between, with quality requirements being the same as aerospace and production rates sitting somewhere in between. The number of different components that comprise an airframe means that flexible automation will be key, giving the ability to automate programming and produce multiple components on the same production line. This further reduces CAPEX requirements over the whole programme. Since traditional automotive or aerospace systems are not capable of this functionality, it will take time to develop new systems.
The Solution: Concurrent Engineering
The solution is a concept that has been in use for many years: concurrent engineering to develop both the component and automated production systems in parallel. Whilst there are many automated production technologies that are already mature, these are generally targeted at either automotive or aerospace. These markets have drastically different requirements in terms of quality and rate. The technology building blocks available need to be modified and developed further to be appropriate for UAM, and a further challenge comes at a system level in how to bring these building blocks together into a turnkey solution. The choice of technologies will have an impact on the design of composite components; they may require manufacturing features to be included in the design, or certain geometries may not be feasible.
By aligning the product development process with the automation development process, it becomes clear where beneficial interactions occur that would otherwise be impossible if automation development occurred after designs had been frozen. These interactions mean that both the product and production line will have improved manufacturing performance.
Outcomes of considering automation in parallel to design
If scalable production is left until designs are frozen and production has started, there is a high probability that the cost and production rate targets being given by the industry will not be met. High rate digital production lines can be commissioned incrementally to minimise capital investment requirements, stay just ahead of the demand curve and reduce the risk of other OEMs taking market share when demand is not met whilst also accessing economies of scope and scale to achieve the cost targets.
Without taking this approach of concurrent development, the strategic implementation of automation will be impossible. At best the implementation will be reactive, resulting in inefficient production and a significant risk of being behind the curve. Undoubtedly, one metric for ascertaining the performance of an investment in a UAM OEM is the level of consideration of manufacturing technology.
Airborne supports concurrent development
With experience in aviation stretching over 40 years, Airborne has the capabilities to support concurrent development of structures and automated manufacturing from initial feasibility through manual prototyping to serial production. With state of the art technology in the digitalisation of production, Airborne are helping to develop composite eVTOL airframes and automated production without the need for significant capital investment, providing the concrete roadmap to differentiate OEMs and show the capacity to reach the quoted production rate and cost targets. This is achieved through our unique combination of manufacturing and automation capabilities.
For reference, the complete presentation given to eVTOL insights is shown below (no audio). For further information or discussion, please get in touch.
This blog was also published on LinkedIn.
