Realising aerial ridesharing at scale

Maybe you’ve heard about Urban Air Mobility (or UAM), maybe you have not. The main industry drivers, OEMs and startups, are aiming to realise shared air transport between suburbs and (within) cities as early as 2025, with Uber being the most aggressive player aiming for 2023. The companies are currently in the development stage, testing full scale prototypes that will be showcased by 2020. After which another 3 to 5 years is needed for product improvement, certification and infrastructure development to be fully operational by 2025.

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But to realise aerial ridesharing at scale, the market must fast-track the production of lightweight and high-quality aircraft structures without compromising on safety. The biggest bottleneck is the current length of development cycles: coming up with a concept, analysing the structure, prototyping and testing takes years. One reason is that many engineering hours go into the manual manufacturing. Another reason is having to comply with strict certification regulations. So, how can eVTOL manufacturers speed up their design, manufacturing and certification processes?

Evolving the supply chain

In my view, there are two types of supply chains: the one you need to win the race and “get there first” and the supply chain you’ll need once you have an established product.

The first phase requires a vertically integrated supply chain. Incumbent aerospace OEMs who are active in this field and newcomers alike, are bringing all major production steps in-house or work with a very small portfolio of key partners under exclusivity contracts. If you are a specialised company, for instance creating electric motors or composites parts, here lies a great opportunity for collaboration!

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Once the product is on the market, the supply chain can mature. I expect the same transition as in the automotive and aerospace industries, where production will be outsourced to a handful of specialised and efficient suppliers. Again, here lie opportunities for companies that offer specialised solutions or processes at scale to work together in an integrated way.

Rolls-Royce

Uber

EmbraerX

Airbus CityAirbus

Time to speed up

Then there is the need to speed up the process. I strongly believe automation is the key. It is a great opportunity to think of automation not just in terms of machines making parts, but also automation in the development cycles. By identifying the process characteristics and limitations upfront, you can build those in the design from an early stage, thus reducing the number of times your product goes through the cycle.

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When it comes to composites structures, today, prototypes are mostly still produced manually due to their low volume. And when volumes are low, costs are high. Luckily, there are already proven solutions that can speed up the production and make automation viable for a one-off product. This not only speeds up the design and development cycle, but ensures that the prototype is made with the technology that will be used for the actual production. This results in reduced flaws, risks and costs, while increasing in-house knowledge and expertise.

Eye on the price: affordable top notch aircraft

Looking at current design proposals such as Uber’s eCRM-models, many are for relatively small aircraft. This means that manual layup and other manual manufacturing processes are technically possible. For relatively small product volumes, production rates can (almost) always be achieved with a larger workforce, but not if cost matters!

What if I told you that one flexible and integrated machine can have multiple parts going through it by deploying multiple processes to create aerostructure components?

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This means that right from the start the machine is fully utilised. As volumes increase and production becomes more steady, you can start automating more steps so you eventually operate in a fully automated and digitalised way. And that is when the fun really begins, because you then can focus on more specific technologies for each component. Multiple specialised suppliers can create volume together and really use the best technologies for each part to achieve top notch quality that is also affordable.