This article, written by Dean Donovan, was originally published on Forbes. Shared on TransportUP with permission.

It’s official: Joby Aviation is buying Uber Elevate. The electric air taxi developer will integrate the Uber Elevate team into its core operation; Uber and Joby will expand their partnership to provide a seamless multi-modal experience and share data on how to provide the right services to customers; and Uber will invest $75 million into Joby, which is on top of its previously undisclosed $50 million investment in Joby’s Series C financing round in January 2020.

This move should support Joby’s strategy of both building a new type of electric aircraft almost entirely in-house as well as operating an airline. Elevate should also give Joby unparalleled competitive and ecosystem intelligence into some of its competitors given that Elevate had engaged Hyundai, Pipistrel, Jaunt Air Mobility, Bell, Signature Flight Support and Chargepoint, among others, as partners in the aerial ride-sharing network that Uber had planned on building. Most industry observers believe that Uber Elevate has built a high-quality group that provides access to arguably the most well-thought through network planning effort in the industry. This could provide benefits in market selection, scale-up and asset utilization of an airline.

Joby is taking a different approach than exists today in most mobility related industries. Over the last few decades, truck and airplane manufacturers have tended to decrease their level of vertical integration to improve capital efficiency and utilize specialized skills developed in the supply chain. Joby is not alone in this break with the recent past. Lilium has also announced plans to forward integrate into air taxi service. Volocopter, the German autonomous aviation company, has launched an air taxi service called Volocity and is aiming to begin operations in Singapore. At the same time, other players in the air mobility space like Jaunt Air Mobility and Bye Aerospace have opted for a leaner, less vertically integrated approach. Will one approach trump the other?

This isn’t going to be cheap

New aircraft programs cost a lot of money to move through certification. On the commercial side of the market, a new narrow-body aircraft could cost $10 billion to $15 billion and can take 10 years or more to bring to market. At the Revolution Aero conference earlier this month, Lee Human of Aerotec, a leading consultancy in this space, suggested that vertically integrated eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) programs would likely require $3 billion to move through certification alone.

Technological innovation creates certification timing and cost risk. eVTOL aircraft will have systems that look fundamentally different than most of today’s small aircraft including, eventually, the provision for autonomous operation. The Eclipse 500, a program that pushed the edge of the technological envelope to pioneer the very light jet (VLJ) category, has become emblematic of the risks of a technology forward approach. The program started in 1998 and only received certification in mid-2006 partially due to a requirement to re-engine the aircraft mid-stream. The first deliveries came in 2007, almost 9 years after the start of the program. The company ultimately ran out of capital due to cost overruns associated with the delays and the 2008 recession.

Setting up a scale commercial carrier will add another layer of capital needs on top of the certification costs of the aircraft. JetBlue raised $128 million to finance its start-up with two planes, and Volaris, now the largest low-cost carrier in Mexico, raised a similar amount to start with four aircraft. However, new commercial operators have the advantage of a well-developed leasing market that allows them to finance new aircraft at attractive prices. They can also slot right into the existing commercial aviation airport infrastructure with limited initial capital investment.

Starting an eVTOL-based air taxi service at a similar scale could cost much more. Given the relatively small capacity of these new eVTOL aircraft (typically four seats or less), to have the same seat capacity as JetBlue or Volaris on start-up one of these new operations might need 70 to 140 aircraft. At $1 million per aircraft that would be $70 million to $140 million in acquisition costs. Given the unknown lifecycle of these new aircraft, financing that via an affordable leasing program seems unlikely. Aircraft acquisition only represents a part of the total expense, which will include start-up expenses, inventory, route development and other overhead costs. In addition, these air taxi services will need to find new investment for charging infrastructure, terminal infrastructure, maintenance facilities etc. Growing the model would require even more capital for aircraft and for developing new routes, which can take 9-12 months to ramp to profitability in commercial aviation.

Put this all together and it may take $4 billion or more to fully develop a vertically integrated business in the UAM space. That business case will come with potentially high variability in terms of timing and cost that investors will need to plan around. Of course, the rewards of pioneering what Morgan Stanley predicts could become a $1.5 trillion market could make those risks more than worthwhile.

Historical Precedents: “We are the Uber of Aviation…”

Elevate ensured that the UAM space lives in a giant shadow cast by the analogy of Uber’s auto ride-sharing model. Uber took a cottage industry, the taxi business, professionalized and modernized it. Ride-sharing models utilized a contract workforce that knows how to drive and brings its own assets. It took the suboptimal taxi user experience and improved it dramatically, while simultaneously reducing the cost of service significantly through smart network management. Not surprisingly, these factors led to the rapid growth of demand and an asset-light business model. It was expensive to build out, but the operating leverage is less than a model that has to buy or finance the assets it took to operate.

Uber tried to build a similar on-demand model for the world of aviation, where it quickly became clear that regulation, labor relations and asset ownership conditions will create a different, less favorable business model.  Some companies have attempted ride-sharing style models in aviation and have run afoul of the FAA. Aviation requires a highly skilled workforce that tends to unionize and scales slowly. The low passenger to pilot ratio will create a pilot shortage if the UAM markets scale in a significant way.  These potential bottlenecks have led most competitors to set autonomous operation goals to enable scalability and manage costs. Carriers must buy their own assets or lease them, if financing is available, and take responsibility for their operations. As a result, vertically integrated UAM carriers will have asset intensive operations.

While it may seem a departure today, aviation and aerospace were vertically integrated in the era where airmail contracts guaranteed significant volume at set pricing. Boeing purchased aircraft engine maker Pratt & Whitney in 1929 and had started United Airlines before subsequently growing it via merger. The guaranteed volumes and pricing from airmail contracts limited Boeing’s exposure to the high levels of operating leverage this strategy created. In fact, those guarantees were so lucrative they led to scandal and eventually the Airmail Act of 1934. That law prohibited aircraft manufacturers from owning airlines and forced Boeing to divest United Airlines and to the spin-out of what eventually became United Technologies (including Pratt and Whitney). Although regional aviation receives some Federal money via the Essential Air Service program, these tend to serve poorer rural areas, not the premium services wealthy urban areas the UAM companies plan to target initially. Unlike Boeing in the 1930s, today’s vertical integrators will need to create their own stable, attractively priced demand to cover their operating leverage.

In contrast, Delta started as a company to solve a specific use case — the boll weevil infestation of the early 1920s. The company built aircraft for crop dusting and then built a crop-dusting aviation service to solve the problem. Designing a solution for a completely new use case feels analogous to the challenge that Lilium, Volocopter and Joby face today. Trying to solve the use case end-to-end via a tightly coordinated team could simplify the challenge. In addition, it is not clear that Lilium could find an air taxi airline customer for its UAM aircraft even if it wanted to do so. The carrier models that could buy and operate these aircraft simply don’t exist today, nor would most airlines feel comfortable operating this type of equipment on their own. To quote David Merrill, CEO of Elroy Air, who has considered building his own freight carrier in addition to the development of the company’s Chaparral autonomous cargo aircraft, “our commercial logistics customers understand the enormous value of our autonomous aircraft in expanding express middle-mile capacity, but many don’t want the added complexity of operating it in the early years.” (My firm DiamondStream Partners is an investor in Elroy Air.)

The Benefits And Risks Of Making An All-In Bet

Ultimately, aviation models usually depend on two things for success: directness of routing to save time, and cost to produce the service (of which the biggest driver is asset utilization). The Elevate team combined with the Uber Partnership, can help Joby significantly in both respects. Via its modeling efforts around UAM network optimization Elevate’s insights can help reduce costs by improving asset utilization of the carrier model. Its practical experience with Uber Copter into how to integrate ride-sharing networks into UAM services to create seamless multi-modal experiences should cut time off customer trips. Based on what we know about stimulation of aviation demand, those two value-adds should help grow the market significantly.

Set against those benefits, stand a few substantial risks. Unlike Boeing’s vertical integration strategy of the 1920s and 1930s, new UAM carriers will find it hard to predict volume early on. Cars represent a formidable competitor. They cost about 37 cents a passenger mile at average occupancy — probably a tenth or less of what UAM services will initially cost. Commuters are highly sensitive to transportation costs and a 22-mile commute each way might cost $130/week via car including parking. At $2/mile, which is the cost for an Uber ride-share today, the same commute would cost about $440/week. At $4/mile, a more realistic initial price for UAM services, it would cost closer to $880/week, although it could be lower in the case of someone who works remotely most days. In an environment where increasing numbers of people work from home and congestion eases, the time advantage of a multi-modal trip based on flights may also decline.

In addition, competition from new forms of fixed-wing aircraft could limit UAM volume, particularly in the early years before urban vertiport infrastructure build outs. Fixed-wing airplanes retrofitted with hybrid-electric propulsion systems should become available about the same time as eVTOL aircraft. These fixed-wing planes could transport passengers at lower cost than the initial eVTOL vehicles due to the greater efficiency of fixed-wing flight, the ability to use existing fueling infrastructure, and their larger number of seats.  These types of operations could also scale more easily due to the higher passenger to pilot ratio.  In commercial aviation, operators that fly smaller, less efficient aircraft often find themselves in the role of developing routes for operators with lower cost, higher capacity planes.

A third concern involves unionization. Given the scale of operations that UAM businesses plan to develop, this industry will most likely have unions that look more like the unions in the regional aviation or the commercial aviation industry than the less unionized charter industry. Pilots unions tend to negotiate contracts that increase the operating leverage of today’s commercial airlines, although some low-cost carriers have variable pay union contracts. As the demand for pilots from electric aviation growth increases, pilot shortages could give unions increased leverage over these businesses. More importantly for the vertical integrators, the unions will probably express reservations about the pace and safety of the transition to autonomous flight technology that the UAM companies will depend on to push costs down and stimulate demand.

Finally, this strategy could create some channel conflict between the vertical integration plays and pure play carriers. Uber Elevate comes complete with a valuable network of partners. Many of these, like the relationship with Signature Flight Support, should translate seamlessly into Joby’s vertically integrated model. However, why should the airframe partners want to support the network of one of their largest and best financed competitors? Even with a carrier strategy, none of the airframe companies with vertical integration plans will have the capital to roll-out these networks globally right away. It will just cost too much. If it is demand and not vehicles in short supply, non-affiliated airlines may choose to use vehicles from manufacturers that don’t compete in their core business.

Partnership strategies can help mitigate some of the risks from operating leverage and labor relations that vertical integration will create. Today, the major commercial carriers purchase capacity from the regional carriers instead of owning and operating those fleets. WheelsUp had a similar kind of operating arrangement with Gama in private charter. While these arrangements certainly have their advantages, the operating leverage will live somewhere in the vertically integrated system and the partners will probably not want to accept the operating leverage without some type of guaranteed volume contract.

Playing To Win

In the end, UAM represents an entirely new transportation model that requires new technology, infrastructure, systems and regulatory frameworks to deliver a cost-effective transport solution with direct connections and a good customer experience. Vertical integration strategies give Joby, Lilium, and Volocopter more control over the levers required to launch in the industry, which could give them, and by extension the entire industry, a better chance of large-scale customer adoptions. However, this strategy also comes with far greater capital requirements, the daunting task of becoming the best at multiple steps of the value chain, and the prospect of channel conflict that slows scaling in their non-priority markets.

The Lilium, Joby, and Volocopter carrier strategies suggest they believe proprietary volume will ramp up quickly. These companies face a chicken and egg problem: To stimulate demand they need the scale, but to pay for the capital required to grow demand also requires scale. When demand is uncertain, playing to win by increasing operating leverage takes vision, courage and deep pockets.

The city of Orlando is making additional investments for the aerial mobility framework of the future. The Orlando Business Journal reported that the Orlando City Commission is preparing to offer a total of $831,250 USD in tax benefits to Lilium over a period of 9 years to engage and attract aerial mobility companies to create an estimated 140+ jobs in the Lake Nona development.

Lilium reportedly was quoted stating that the investment is earmarked towards construction of a 56,000 square foot transportation hub, which would substantiate the job increase figures quoted. This transportation hub would serve as the primary means for aerial mobility operations for Lilium within Florida, and would likely serve other cities and locales with smaller scale “sub-hub” vertiports or individual helipads.

The agreement also underscores another often overlooked component of aerial mobility implementation – the personnel required to run the business. While a key facet of future mobility is ongoing automation of previously manned tasks, the bridge solution between current technological readiness and that of the 22nd century will include humans in the loop for the forseeable next decade, or two. Accounting for and planning the infrastructure for human interaction and operations that interface with the aerial mobility industry (across design and operations phases) is crucial to short-term success that will ultimately allow for mid to long term success.

Not unlike current fulfillment centers, aerial mobility transportation hubs will require personnel to perform quick turn actions to replenish battery packs, conduct maintenance and troubleshooting on aircraft needing repairs, and manage the physical implications of safety stocks of parts and other supply chain considerations. Increasingly, the infrastructure to support these applications is very similar to that of current factories and fulfillment centers, which also represent economic advantages to commercial land owners and developers within local economies.

Why it’s important: Orlando’s agreement with Lilium will provide an economic boost to the area, in addition to more jobs, and emphasizes the importance of human touch-labor for aerial mobility processes today. Bridge solutions will involve human interaction with eVTOL technology for at least another decade, which mean that there is additional opportunity for local economic development and stimulus from the aerial mobility industry prior to any commercial air taxi operations taking place.

Source // Orlando Business Journal

Lilium, the Munich-based aviation company developing an all-electric, vertical take-off and landing aircraft for regional air mobility, has agreed with both Dusseldorf Airport and Cologne/Bonn Airport to explore how the two airports can become hubs within a regional air mobility network spanning North Rhine-Westphalia. Lilium plans to establish regional air mobility as a new mode of transportation, using its fully electric, 5-seater aircraft by 2025.

Rendering of a possible vertiport at Cologne Bonn Airport (Copyright: CGN/Lilium)

The announcement was made this week in Dusseldorf in the presence of the Transportation Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia Hendrik Wüst. As the largest and most densely populated German state (18 million inhabitants), including ten cities with over 300,000 inhabitants, as well as more than 40 universities and colleges and four international trade fair locations, North Rhine-Westphalia is an ideal location for Lilium landing sites. The Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan area is the largest in Germany and the third largest in Europe. It now aims to become home to mobility in the third dimension.

North Rhine-Westphalia Transport Minister Hendrik Wüst explained: “What sounds like science fiction today may soon be reality. In the federal state with the highest mobility needs, smart ideas for better mobility are always welcome. We need all modes of transport in order to provide people with a convincingly diverse range of mobility options.“

He added: “North Rhine-Westphalia is a model region for the mobility of the future. We want digitally-networked mobility in North Rhine-Westphalia not only to be researched and developed, but also experienced as soon as possible. This is why we support and promote many future-oriented projects and research projects here in North-Rhine-Westphalia.”

As international traffic hubs with excellent connections to air, rail and road traffic, the two airports Cologne/Bonn and Dusseldorf are an ideal starting point for the development of networked mobility, which also includes air taxis.

“We are excited to bring our innovative service to North Rhine-Westphalia,” says Lilium COO Dr. Remo Gerber. “Cities such as Aachen, Bielefeld, Münster and Siegen will be directly connected to the region’s largest international airports within 30mins, providing emission-free, high-speed connectivity at an affordable price.”

Remo Gerber added: “North Rhine-Westphalia and its airports are ideal partners for us to implement this ambitious project of the future – we are grateful to receive this support from both the Ministry and our partners at the airports to implement our vision”.

Why it matters: Lilium’s partnership with Germany’s Transport Ministry will be crucial in making aerial mobility a reality in the region. The partnership will ensure the company has public sector support in recruiting talent, meeting with regulators, and garnering public support. Expect to see more partnerships like this one across the globe as manufacturers ready their prototypes for flight.

Source: Lilium

According to local news sources, board members of Tampa Bay Area Regional Transit Authority met virtually last week to discuss the future of transportation for the area, after being pitched by German air taxi developer Lilium. According to Lilium, flights could carry passengers from Tampa to St. Petersberg in 8 minutes. This journey that could help ease traffic over the two bridges over Old Tampa Bay that currently connect the two cities. The distance of the flight would be about 25 miles, and would cost passengers $90 per seat (significantly cheaper than existing helicopter options).

The potential Lilium route in the Tampa Bay Area

Said Chris Jadick, Director of Communications for the Tampa Transit Authority:
“We have real transit needs now…TBARTA is looking toward future transit innovation technology such as air taxis that are really going to define how we travel in the decades to come. One of the things they say is, look, if we can make that flight at eight minutes and it takes a taxi 35 to 45 minutes to do the same thing, we’re going to be more efficient because we can do more flights in less time.”

Jadick also mentioned the potential for autonomous operations in the area saying, “…as technology develops, if we get to autonomous vehicles that do not require a pilot, that too is going to bring the cost down.”

Ultimately, The TBARTA board made a motion to move forward in learning more from Lilium. A representative said: “We’d like to get more information. We’d like to report at our next board meeting on what it would take to do a pilot study”. According to the TBARTA, Lililum was asked when it might be able to launch initial operations, and the company responded with an estimate of 2025.

Notably, Lilium is not the first aerial mobility company to get involved in Florida. Prior to COVID-19, BLADE Air Mobility (which already provides by-the-seat helicopter charters throughout the U.S) had planned an entire sea-to-shore transport route to support tourists visiting Miami for events like the Super Bowl, Art Basel, and the Miami Open. In addition, real estate companies like Royal Palms have begun including rooftop vertiorts in the designs for their upcoming buildings, such as the Paramount Miami Worldcenter.

The concept for a vertiport on the rooftop of the Paramount Miami Worldcenter

Why it’s important: This pitch in Tampa by Lilium represents the company’s first reported effort into developing air taxis in an area other than Europe. Although Lilium has yet to report how many U.S cities it has approached, this development from Tampa is a strong indicator of its intention to enter the aerial mobility market in the U.S.

Lilium looks to resume flight tests in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as restrictions on business operations are eased around the world. The German-based company has been working from home for the past two months and has been looking for ways to resume operations while maintaining social distancing among other preventative measures. Lilium currently expects flight testing to begin in “a few months.”

Over the past several months, Lilium has been producing its second technology demonstrator aircraft, which will incorporate some design changes from the first prototype flown in 2019, fly at faster speeds, and be able to transition from vertical lift-off to fixed-wing cruise flight. Lilium aims to have the model fully certified by 2025. This latest edition of the Lilium Jet can seat up to five passengers.

In a recent presentation, Lilium’s Chief Program Officer Yves Yemsi demonstrated the company’s implementation of new management processes, including stage gate reviews at its company and across the supply chain. This concept has been successfully used elsewhere in the aerospace industry in tracking the overall technological readiness of a flight vehicle and its systems at organizations like NASA, Boeing, Airbus, and more. “We don’t want to lose quality at any stage so we are putting controls in place at all levels,” explained Yemsi, who formerly held a senior quality and program role with Airbus.

Why it matters: Earlier this year, Lilium completed another round of funding, generating over $240M bringing its fundraising total to $340M. The company has equipped itself with more than 450 employees, 35 of which hold PhDs, and many of which come from prestigious aerospace companies. Alongside its German competitor, Volocopter, the company has amassed an impressive amount of capital and talent. With restrictions easing around the world in light of COVID-19, TransportUP expects to see Lilium back in the spotlight as it looks to resume flight testing.

Read more news about Lilium here.

Just six months after unveiling the latest version of its prototype, Munich based air taxi company Lilium has released footage of its five-passenger jet making the transition from vertical to horizontal flight:

The Lilium jet can seat 5 passengers, fly at 186mph, is all-electric, and  has a range of nearly 200 miles. Lilium plans to build not just the aircraft itself, but an entire urban and regional air mobility system in Europe that will allow people to fly anywhere at the tap of a button.

Lilium has been working on its jet air taxi since 2015, and flew the first two-seater prototype in 2017. Since then, the company has gained great prestige by hiring former executives from Gett, Tesla, Airbus, Audi, BMW, and Rolls Royce Aerospace. Lilium has established its software engineering headquarters in London, and is currently seeking to raise an additional $500 million.

The latest prototype, which exhibited speeds of over 100km/h earlier this week, features a total of 36 ducted funs, which are built into the wing itself. During vertical take-off, these point straight down, and then tilt slowly upward to become flush with the wing and provide horizontal thrust as in a tradition airplane. Because these small motors are electric, they feature some of the best power-to-weight ratios in the entire aviation industry, with a total of 2000 horsepower available.

The Lilium Jet’s tilting fans

“The Lilium Jet continues to meet our expectations, delivering excellent in-flight performance and remarkably smooth transition from vertical to horizontal flight. ”         –Leandro Bigarella, Head of Flight Testing. 

This test marks the completion of the Lilium Jet’s first phase of testing, which has consisted of over 100 ground and air tests. The company will now move into the next stage of testing where the aircraft will endure higher speed operations and eventually attain certification.

“It’s been thrilling to watch the Lilium Jet progress so rapidly and to see our first flying taxi manufacturing facility. We are taking tangible and concrete steps towards making our vision of regional air mobility a reality and we’re doing it on time.” –Daniel Wiegand, co-founder and CEO

With this latest announcement, Lilium has also announced the completion of its first large-scale manufacturing facility, which is 3000 square feet. It has also begun construction of a much larger facility, and hired Yves Yemsi, former Head of Program Quality for the Airbus A350, as Chief Program Officer.

Lilium plans to launch commercial services in multiple cities around the world by 2025. To learn more about the Jet and its mission, visit the Lilium website.

Why it’s important: Many industry experts have named the transition from vertical to horizontal flight as one of the greatest engineering challenges in VTOL design. Lilium has now overcome this important barrier, marking its jet as one of the highest-performing eVTOL prototypes in the industry. With this latest announcement, Lilium continues to make timely progress toward its planned 2025 commercial launch.