Reports Envision Regional Air Networks Enabled by Electric Aircraft

摘要

Proponents of electric aircraft have a vision of persuading travelers to get off the roads and rails and into night with cheap, clean and quiet air transportation. But realizing that vision requires not only breathing new life into atrophied commuter airlines and underutilized small airports but creating an entire aviation ecosystem to address a sector that today is not an aviation market. New reports from the U.S. and UK articulate similar concepts for a new form of short-range air mobility enabled by the converging forces of electric propulsion, autonomous flight, automated airspace management and app-based ride-sharing. Both look beyond the concept of intracity urban air mobility (UAM) to a wider network of passenger-and cargo-carrying air vehicles. A report produced by Swanson Aviation Consultancy and released by UK aerospace trade association ADS Group calls the concept distributed aviation. New propulsion systems will lead to the creation of electric low-cost carriers-eLCCs-flying subregional routes that are not economically viable for hydrocarbon-powered aircraft, proposes Darrell Swanson, managing director and the report's author. In parallel, a NASA white paper makes the case for using the converging technologies to enable regional air mobility (RAM). Scaling UAM up to mass transportation will require multiple technological and operational transformations to come together, the report contends. But, through targeted technology investments, RAM can offer earlier benefits for communities, industry and investors, NASA says.