When doing my internship last year, it took me about an hour one-way to get to work. This amounts up to two hours per day, 10 hours per week, 40 hours a month and about 420 hours per year which equals 17.5 days. Even though I only had to do this for six months, there were many times that I wished I could just do teleportation to spend this time better.
Of course, the way of working will also shift more towards remote working, with the COVID-19 crises being a major driver in this process. However, this is not possible for all employees. Even in the future, people that commute to work will have an effect on the city traffic – overcrowded streets and air pollution being some of the consequences (Fev, 2020).
Urban Air Mobility tries to solve these problems: No investments in infrastructure is needed, as the sky is available for everyone. Currently, many aviation and automotive companies are conducting extensive research about this topic. Airbus “City Airbus” concept is designed in such a way that it will carry up to four passengers with a speed of 120km/h (EVTOL News, 2020). Next to that, Uber is also working on building a air transportation service (called UBER Air) operating in three cities – Los Angeles, Dallas and Melbourne already in 2023 (that’s only three years!). The underlying software, Elevate Cloud Services, has started its testing phase last year (Uber, 2020).
There are different prototypes of vertical take-off and landing aircrafts that might become our preferred transportation in the next decades. All of them have one thing in common: They are electricity-powered, meaning no emissions at all, positively affecting our environment (FEV, 2020). Next to using these vehicles to get to work, it has also a high potential to bring passengers from airports to city centers (Roland Berger, 2020).
But there are also some concerns: Will people be willing to trust an autonomously flying aircraft? Where can these vehicles land? And who is liable if an accident happens?
What do you think? Would you use such a mode of transportation, if it is affordable, for every-day use?
Sources:
Airbus (2020). Urban Air Mobility. Retrieved from https://www.airbus.com/innovation/zero-emission/urban-air-mobility.html
FEV (2020). Urban Air Mobility (UAM). Retrieved from https://uam.fev.com
Uber (2020). Uber Air. Retrieved from https://www.uber.com/de/de/elevate/uberair/
Roland Berger (2020). Urban Air Mobility – The way to a sustainable intercity air transport. Retrieved from https://www.rolandberger.com/it/Point-of-View/Urban-Air-Mobility-The-way-to-a-sustainable-intercity-air-transport.html
EVTOL News (2020). Airbus City Airbus. Retrieved from https://evtol.news/airbus-helicopters/
Photo: https://innovationorigins.com/de/urban-air-mobility-stadtverkehr-in-drei-dimensionen/
Hi Rabea,
First of all, I would like to mention that I really like your topic. Very interesting article you wrote! As we all know, time is scarce and traffic jams can be really annoying. I think that a ride in these urban air mobility vehicles would be quite expensive in the beginning, as it is something new and can save a lot of time causing the demand to be very high.
However, I do think three years is very optimistic. Think about the situation where a lot of vehicles are flying in the air. What kind of traffic rules apply? Is the vehicle operated by the system of a vehicle itself and does it communicate with other vehicles? And who would then be liable in case of any damages? Do you have to go to some kind of airport to step in or out? Next to that, the security must be very thoroughly checked, as an accident could easily result in deaths among the passengers if such a vehicle falls out of the sky. A lot of questions that come to my mind and that will probably take quite a few years to have it all sorted out.
Nevertheless, I think UAM is a really cool concept and I can’t wait to make my first trip!
I find your article very interesting. It is true that this innovation has the potential to revolutionize the world as we know it now. I partly grew up in Dubai where the metro is completely automated and not underground. It looks very futuristic and in the beginning some people were hesitant whereas it was not dangerous to travel in a metro with no drivers. But in the end it was very successful and everybody uses it. However I do believe that it will be much more complicated than that for individual cars. Terrorist attacks could also become one of the risks and the switching costs too high. A special permit would have to be obtained in order to regulate air traffic that would probably have other specific rules. I am curious to see how this will evolve in the future.
Dear Rabea,
Thank you very much for bringing attention to this important topic. I think the ethical question of AI are often disregarded: What if a car/plane/… has to choose between killing one person or multiple persons? Is it gonna act based on utilitarism or other methods? What jf one of the sensors of the plane are defective? can it then give control to a human?
Further, I feel like one solution may be to have semi-autonomous systems for pilots. That may be manifested as an AI that flies completely autonomous. However, if a critical situation is about to arise, a human pilot gets notified earlly such that he can make a decision by manual steering.
Maybe that’s something to think about
Hi Rabea,
Thank you for your interesting post. I think urban air mobility is something that would (somewhere in the future) really attract Dutch people in specific. The debate of constructing more highways vs protecting green areas (e.g. Groene Hart) is ongoing. Urban mobility would solve this dilemma as it offers a new way of transportation, while it does not affect green areas. It could also more evenly distribute commuters and thereby ease peak times in public transportation. Personally I have experienced those peak times too often, so if there would be an option to take the airbus, I would definitely consider it :).
However, I do think the development of such vehicles (e.g. airbus) is still in a very early stage. What happens if (parts of) the system fail(s)? Is it secure? Will the government have a stake? Also, I think it is something very new to society. I think it will be like the introduction of the first Ford car. A car was initially very expensive and therefore only accessible to the elite. With urban air mobility, I think this will also be the case due to the high research and development costs.
So in short, I can definitely picture urban air mobility as a mainstream form of public transportation, but not in the near future.