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No doubt the whole eVTOL/AAM space will lead to positive and long lasting developments for aviation, but the amount of money chasing specifically the air taxi/u

No doubt the whole eVTOL/AAM space will lead to positive and long lasting developments for aviation, but the amount of money chasing specifically the air taxi/uam space (Joby, Lilium, Archer, Volocopter, etc.) is staggering given how utterly nonsensical the business plans and projections are. Right now everyone is in a race to certify. I guarantee that will be the easy part. The whole list of issues this community is not thinking through and addressing dwarfs those that they are. Energy density is just the start. For instance: Power requirements for these business models at scale will require a sudden turnaround and mass embrace of nuclear. Infrastructure build will require government investment and widespread use of eminent domain. City laws and ordinances allowing for uam flight need to be rewritten. I could go on… Btw I am in the industry.

jillesvangurp 5y ago
There's a lot of money floating in this sector for sure. But it's also a potentially huge market that might make it worth the risk. The value proposition is simple: get from A to B quickly at the cost of a few KWH. This plane has a 300KWH battery. That's about 5x a Tesla battery (the big 75KWH ones). The expensive rate for charging a Tesla is about 15$ (give or take). So this, 7 seat plane would cost about 5x that (at the expensive rate, you could get a better rate). 75$. Lets call it 10$ per passenger. And that would be for the maximum range. For short hops, think in terms of a decent coffee at your local coffee shop. Maybe two cups. Just the energy cost of course, there's more cost than that. But that's great value in a world where short 20-40 mile distances in dense urban environments can take an hour+ to travel and where people routinely do that by taxi, uber, or public transport. The premium segment of that is thousands of people paying north of 50$ routinely for relatively long journeys every day. That kind of is the market for this thing. Charge 50-100$ per ride at a cost that is likely closer to 10$. Nice fat margins. The unit price of a single plane is probably going to be around 3 million (initially). So, selling a thousand of those would amount to about 3 billion revenue. Likely prices will come down over time. But basically the first few companies that manage to produce vehicles like this in very modest volume are looking to rake in billions of revenue. The early adopter market is going to be amazingly profitable. The long term market when cost drops, production scales, and the novelty wears off is still going to be quite nice. Fundamentally these machines are not vastly more complicated to build than a premium EV and their energy cost is similarly low. That's why these companies are so hot right now. There will be a lot of companies that fail and a few that might end up printing money. Lilium has a great sales pitch. The only question is whether they can deliver.
- theYipster 5y ago
  This simple value prop fails to take into account the physics of flying, the operational costs of aviation, the societal disruption and associated costs of building and managing support infrastructure, etc, etc. Its nonsense.
  - hansel_der 5y ago
    i want to agree with you but then again i find myself thinking how even moderately rich ppl use helicopters to move around in dense metropolitan areas basically for decades. rich single nerds will make this market work imo.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

There's a lot of money floating in this sector for sure. But it's also a potentially huge market that might make it worth the risk. The value proposition is simple: get from A to B quickly at the cost of a few KWH. This plane has a 300KWH battery. That's about 5x a Tesla battery (the big 75KWH ones). The expensive rate for charging a Tesla is about 15$ (give or take). So this, 7 seat plane would cost about 5x that (at the expensive rate, you could get a better rate). 75$. Lets call it 10$ per passenger. And that would be for the maximum range. For short hops, think in terms of a decent coffee at your local coffee shop. Maybe two cups. Just the energy cost of course, there's more cost than that. But that's great value in a world where short 20-40 mile distances in dense urban environments can take an hour+ to travel and where people routinely do that by taxi, uber, or public transport. The premium segment of that is thousands of people paying north of 50$ routinely for relatively long journeys every day. That kind of is the market for this thing. Charge 50-100$ per ride at a cost that is likely closer to 10$. Nice fat margins. The unit price of a single plane is probably going to be around 3 million (initially). So, selling a thousand of those would amount to about 3 billion revenue. Likely prices will come down over time. But basically the first few companies that manage to produce vehicles like this in very modest volume are looking to rake in billions of revenue. The early adopter market is going to be amazingly profitable. The long term market when cost drops, production scales, and the novelty wears off is still going to be quite nice. Fundamentally these machines are not vastly more complicated to build than a premium EV and their energy cost is similarly low. That's why these companies are so hot right now. There will be a lot of companies that fail and a few that might end up printing money. Lilium has a great sales pitch. The only question is whether they can deliver.

theYipster 5y ago
This simple value prop fails to take into account the physics of flying, the operational costs of aviation, the societal disruption and associated costs of building and managing support infrastructure, etc, etc. Its nonsense.
- hansel_der 5y ago
  i want to agree with you but then again i find myself thinking how even moderately rich ppl use helicopters to move around in dense metropolitan areas basically for decades. rich single nerds will make this market work imo.