There are more solutions than obstacles, Nicolas Zart
What is Advanced Air Mobility (AAM)?
It still amuses me that after one year of existence, ElectricAirMobility.news still hasn’t answered the most important question: What is AAM?
The 1950s Dream: Urban Air Mobility
Urban Air Mobility (UAM) has been a vision of the future since the 1950s when helicopters were new and considered a revolutionary way to connect communities overlooked by the rapidly expanding U.S. highway system. They were seen as an addition to the complex new ways of moving on this planet, trains, cars, sea vessels, and aviation. However, helicopters of that era proved too expensive, noisy, and inefficient for widespread urban use, and UAM never took off.
Forward to the 2000s, and the conversation shifted to electric mobility everywhere from roads to air. Electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft were seen as achievable. These futuristic vehicles then promised to jump from one building top to another, offering intra-city travel and even airport transfers. Although naive now, it served as a springboard to get us thinking about how to achieve this dream. But the technology wasn’t ready yet. Batteries lacked the energy and power density, and the infrastructure was nonexistent.
Fast forward to 2017, everything changed. The conversation further evolved. At that time, only the terms UAM and eVTOLs were used to describe a futuristic vision of short hops within cities.
AAM: A New Chapter in 2017
With the maturation of battery energy density and other pivotal technologies, regional air mobility became feasible. NASA coined the term Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) to describe a broader concept that initially encompassed cutting-edge technologies like hypersonic hydrogen propulsion. However, AAM today has come to signify a holistic framework that includes UAM and regional air mobility.
That same year, Uber Elevate unveiled its AAM blueprint, offering a foundational roadmap for how AAM systems, including infrastructure and operations, could work.
Diverse Aircraft Designs in AAM
There is one thing we can all agree on, the advent of electric mobility has unleashed a plethora of aircraft designs unparalleled since the birth of aviation. In over a decade of development, aircraft designs in the AAM space have diversified to meet different needs and challenges:
- eVTOLs: Aircraft with thrusters, wings, tilt-rotors, tilt-motors, or tilt-wings.
- eSTOLs and eCTOLs: Aircraft designed for short and conventional takeoffs and landings and electric conventional take-off and landing aircraft, similar to traditional planes but powered by electricity, hydrogen, or hybrid systems, using electric-only power, hybrid setups with Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF), or hydrogen propulsion.
- Drones: These are the eyes in the sky, providing real-time data and laying the foundation for operational models in AAM.
These technologies make travel faster and air travel quieter, safer, and more efficient while reducing emissions significantly compared to internal combustion engines.
Infrastructure: The Backbone of AAM
Without infrastructure, AAM is just an idea. These aircraft need somewhere to take off and land, get serviced and most importantly, energized and refueled. A robust infrastructure is needed to support these new aircraft:
1. Terminals: The Vertiport and Multiport Design
Unlike traditional airports or heliports, AAM terminals must accommodate diverse aircraft types, dynamic flight patterns, and smaller footprints. They also need to integrate seamlessly with urban and regional transportation systems. Questions such as how are they different from airports and heliports and how to design better passenger flow, cargo handling, and integration with ground transportation for these modern mobility solutions are what AAM infrastructure companies are working on.
2. Energy Management: High Power, Clean Energy
AAM aircraft will need a lot of energy currently not available from the various grids we have nor from what utilities can provide. This robust energy ecosystem is made up of the following:
- Charging Needs: Aircraft may require charging stations capable of delivering 4,000 to 5,000 amps, translating to 1.6 to 2 megawatts per charging session. Add to this multiple aircraft charging, eVTOLs, drones, land vehicles, and overall vertiport operations and you have as copious amount of energy needed.
- Local Energy Production: Local energy production is a potential currently studied. These include using turbines with SAF to power electricity or nuclear micro-reactors to play a pivotal role. By generating electricity and hydrogen locally and integrating smart grid capacities, vertiports will be able to support load balancing during peak demand.
- Hydrogen Production: Producing hydrogen locally removes the challenges of transporting, a notorious problem with this energy system.
All of this needs storage in the shape of batteries for electricity, potentially flowcells and traditional batteries with temporary hydrogen storage available to refuel aircraft and create electricity as needed.
3. Traffic Management Integration
The integration of Uncrewed Traffic Management (UTM) with traditional Air Traffic Management (ATM) is crucial to ensure safety and efficiency in integrating into public airspace.
4. Landing Infrastructure: From Static to Smart
Landing pads for eVTOLs and runways for eSTOLs, and eCTOLs will evolve from static to smart vertipads and runways for dynamic operations and scalability.
The Benefits of AAM
AAM isn’t just about flying cars or futuristic aircraft. AAM is a subset of aviation, itself a subset of mobility which is undergoing a convergence into a multimobility society. AAM solves a few nagging real-world transportation challenges:
- Hard-to-reach Point: Conventional airplanes and helicopters are limited in where they can operate, particularly as it relates to noise. Most airports and heliports cannot operate at night. Electric aircraft are quieter and operation hours can be extended. Case in point, VoltAero’s Cassio has an electric nose gear allowing it to taxi quietly to runways. Using their electric motors, all of these aircraft are generally quieter than the internal combustion engine (ICE) variants.
- More Efficient Travel: Reaching destinations in minutes instead of hours by bypassing road congestions and ground traffic.
- Sustainability: Lowering emissions with electric and hydrogen-powered aircraft. Hybrid design can potentially take off and land using electricity and only use their ICE systems sparingly in flight.
- Accessibility: Links underserved regions and enhances connectivity. Conventional aircraft can’t always connect underserved communities with urban and regional hubs. Electric aircraft with a smaller footprint that are quieter can.
- Quiet Operations: Advances in propulsion technology make aircraft significantly quieter than traditional helicopters.
The Future of AAM
Advanced Air Mobility is no longer a distant dream; it’s an emerging reality poised to transform how we move across land, sea, and sky. From drones to eVTOLs and beyond, AAM offers a sustainable, efficient, and inclusive future for transportation. As we continue to innovate, the sky is no longer the limit—it’s just the beginning. AAM transforms not just how we travel, but how we live. Reducing traffic congestion, and enabling emergency medical services, one ticket gets you everywhere regardless of vehicles, vessels, trains, or aircraft you use, the possibilities are endless. And to make this vision a reality, collaboration between governments, industry leaders, and communities is happening all over the world.
Call to Action
We would like to know, what was your understanding of AAM and how has it changed after listening to this podcast? How do you see it impacting your life? What more would you add to it? What would you like to see happening with AAM?
You can see the podcast on BuzzSprout!
“Join us on The Ways We Move podcast as we dive deeper into the world of Advanced Mobility. From the latest aircraft designs to the infrastructure that will support them, automotive, maritime, railways, and more. Explore how the mobility revolution is shaping the future of transportation. Tune in and discover the ways we move!”