If You Fly It, Will Commuters Come? A Survey to Model Demand for eVTOL Urban Air Trips

Binder, Robert B.; Garrow, Laurie A.; German, Brian; Mokhtarian, Patricia L.; Daskilewicz, Matthew J.; Douthat, Thomas

doi:10.2514/6.2018-2882

Cited by 27 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…To better understand the service demand and to be able to predict it, understanding consumer adoption is crucial; in other words, if and when users are going to use urban air mobility. For instance, a study from the Georgia Institute of Technology designed a survey to collect responses from 2,500 high-income workers in di↵erent areas of the US to predict their demand for eVTOL in urban areas, with flights ranging up to 90 km (Garrow et al, 2018). Passenger adoption in a UAM environment was also explored using choice modeling in a case study based in Munich (Fu et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors affecting the adoption and use of urban air mobility

Haddad

Chaniotakis

Straubinger

et al. 2020

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice

148

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Technological advances have recently led to the development of urban air mobility (UAM), an alternative transportation mode with several concepts including vehicles operated by on-demand fully-automated vertical take-o↵ and landing aircraft (VTOL) for intra-city passenger transportation. However, despite a growing interest in UAM, understanding users' perceptions to it remains limited. This research aims to identify and quantify the factors a↵ecting the adoption and use of UAM, based on relevant tools from the literature, such as recurring factors in studies on aerial vehicle concepts, ground autonomous vehicles, but also acceptance models, such as the Technology Acceptance Model by Davis et al. (1989). A stated-preference survey was developed to assess the perception of users in terms of adoption time horizon, including options such as the first six years of the service's implementation, "unsure", and "never". The obtained results were evaluated using exploratory factor analyses, and the specification and estimation of suitable discrete choice models, multinomial logit models (MNLs) and ordered logit models (OLMs), with adoption time horizon as dependent variable. Findings revealed the importance of safety and trust, a nity to automation, data concerns, social attitude, and socio-demographics for adoption. Factors, such as the value of time savings, the perception of automation costs, and service reliability, were also found to be highly influential. There was also an indication that skeptical respondents, i.e. answering "unsure", had a behavior similar to late and non-adopters, i.e. adoption time horizon higher than six years or answering "never". The summarized results were represented in an extended Technology Acceptance Model for urban air mobility, and provided insights for policymakers and industrial stakeholders.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors affecting the adoption and use of urban air mobility

Haddad

Chaniotakis

Straubinger

et al. 2020

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice

148

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…There are two potential strategies to overcome the aforementioned inherent challenges and predict the customer requests for ATS -(i) adopting qualitative approaches, such as scientifically designed surveys and focus groups on obtaining the subjective opinion of potential customers and experts (e.g., Binder et al, 2018;Garrow et al, 2018;Garrow et al, 2019), (ii) approximating historical data from other ODM services (e.g., ridesharing service, traditional taxi service) and relying on quantitative methods/analytical models (Rajendran and Zack 2019).…”

Section: Demand Prediction For Air Taxismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Besides, all these studies use qualitative approaches due to the lack of historical data and seek to determine the market demand for the introductory phase of ATS (Binder et al, 2018;Garrow et al, 2018;Boddupalli, 2019;Garrow et al, 2019). One of the first works conducted focus groups to gauge the demand for on-demand air services (Garrow et al 2018). The study estimated high-income households to be the early adopters of eVTOLs (due to their ability to spend more/higher value of time).…”

Section: Qualitative Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Air taxi service for urban mobility: A critical review of recent developments, future challenges, and opportunities

Rajendran

Srinivas

2020

Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Re

118

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Expected to operate in the imminent future, air taxi service (ATS) is an aerial on-demand transport for a single passenger or a small group of riders, which seeks to transform the method of everyday commute. This uncharted territory in the emerging transportation world is anticipated to enable consumers bypass traffic congestion in urban road networks. By adopting an electric vertical takeoff and landing concept (eVTOL), air taxis could be operational from skyports retrofitted on building rooftops, thus gaining advantage from an implementation standpoint. Motivated by the potential impact of ATS, this study provides a review of air taxi systems and associated operations. We first discuss the current developments in the ATS (demand prediction, air taxi network design, and vehicle configuration). Next, we anticipate potential future challenges of ATS from an operations management perspective, and review the existing literature that could be leveraged to tackle these problems (ride-matching, pricing strategies, vehicle maintenance scheduling, and pilot training and recruitment). Finally, we detail future research opportunities in the air taxi domain.

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“…Of those studies, Silva et al most recently presented concepts for a Quadrotor, a Side-by-Side Helicopter, and a Lift+Cruise aircraft, all capable of performing a reference UAM mission defined by Patterson et al [4,5]. Many studies line out the specific challenges regarding UAM, such as battery technology, autonomy, infrastructure, public acceptance and certification [6,7]. Use cases such as the one presented by Uber, a transportation network company, suggest a dramatic reduction of travel time and cost, mostly based on the decreasing absolute transport distance, the avoidance of road congestion, and a lean infrastructure [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robust Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Electric VTOL Concepts for Urban Air Mobility

André

Hajek

2019

AIAA Aviation 2019 Forum

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Under which scenario is Urban Air Mobility more sustainable than ground-based mobility? To answer this question, we provide a Life Cycle Assessment of three electric Vertical TakeOff and Landing concept aircraft, including a quantification of uncertainties in the concept's material composition. We conduct a Cradle-to-Gate analysis of the concepts and extend it by a Wellto-Shaft analysis of Urban Air Mobility operation, including all relevant upstream greenhouse gas emissions due to battery use, again including input uncertainties. As for aviation systems in general, we show that the impact of power demand in operation is most significant and exceeds emissions from production by orders of magnitude. We thus provide sensitivity analyses of the results for each of the most influential quantities. We report an optimum flight speed for minimum greenhouse gas emissions and a quantification of the impact of hover flight. Finally, we compare and quantify the impact's sensitivities on influential factors like the region of operation, and mission design within reasonable ranges. From the sensitivity analyses, we conclude that only very lightweight vehicles for Urban Air Mobility can be more sustainable than traditional, fossil-fueled ground-based transportation, given a maximum seat utilization, clean power grid, low hover share and an effective reduction in travel distance. We further conclude that, with a combination of the most optimistic assumptions, Urban Air Mobility concepts may environmentally compete with battery-powered cars.

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If You Fly It, Will Commuters Come? A Survey to Model Demand for eVTOL Urban Air Trips

Cited by 27 publications

References 3 publications

Factors affecting the adoption and use of urban air mobility

Factors affecting the adoption and use of urban air mobility

Air taxi service for urban mobility: A critical review of recent developments, future challenges, and opportunities

Robust Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Electric VTOL Concepts for Urban Air Mobility

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