There are more solutions than obstacles. Nicolas Zart
There are more solutions than obstacles. Yet in Advanced Air Mobility, we keep choosing the obstacles.
Everyone in aviation and AAM knows the truth, but almost no one acts on it. People complain about outdated business models, leave traditional aviation jobs frustrated with the old ways, join AAM startups promising revolution, and then fall right back into the same patterns that have held aviation back for decades.
The irony is painful: we’re developing aircraft that can take off vertically, fly silently on electricity, and land autonomously. Meanwhile, we’re funding them, certifying them, and planning to operate them using business and financial frameworks that haven’t fundamentally changed since the Wright Brothers.
The System That Won’t Let Go
The challenge isn’t the technology. Electric motors convert over 85% of electrical energy into motion, compared to about 20% for internal combustion engines. Research from Chalmers University shows that after just 1,000 flight hours, electric aircraft overtake fossil fuel aircraft in climate impact—and can achieve up to 60% less total environmental impact over their lifetime.
The International Council on Clean Transportation found that electric aircraft can provide 49% to 88% reduction in carbon emissions relative to fossil-fueled reference aircraft, even accounting for battery production. A comparative study of the Stockholm-Gothenburg route showed electric aircraft achieving 40.5% to 87.2% efficiency compared to just 15.6% to 38.6% for internal combustion engine aircraft.
The technology works. The efficiency is proven. The environmental case is clear.
So why are we still stuck?
The Double Standard We Can’t Escape
Scroll through social media, and you’ll see it constantly: dramatic images of lithium mines, dire warnings about the environmental costs of electric vehicles and aircraft. Yet these posts are typically shared from smartphones and laptops—devices powered by lithium batteries—by people who still fill up their cars with gasoline and book flights on jet fuel-powered aircraft.
The double standard is striking. Lithium mining is demonized while petroleum extraction is treated as business as usual, even though fossil fuel mining is responsible for an estimated 34 billion tonnes of carbon emissions globally every year—compared to about 1.3 million tonnes from lithium mining.
Yes, lithium mining has real environmental costs. Mining one tonne can result in 15 tonnes of carbon emissions and require up to 500,000 liters of water. In Chile’s Atacama Desert, lithium extraction consumes around 65% of the region’s scarce water resources. These impacts are serious and need addressing.
But here’s what most discussions miss: the real issue isn’t lithium versus petroleum. It’s the outdated extraction and manufacturing systems we use for both.
Why AAM Startups Keep Falling Into Old Patterns
I’ve watched this cycle repeat for nearly two decades, covering the electric mobility industry, as explored in episodes of The Ways We Move podcast. Talented people leave established aerospace companies frustrated with bureaucracy, risk-aversion, and shortsighted thinking. They join AAM startups promising to do things differently.
Then reality hits.
When it’s time to raise capital, investors want traditional return structures. When it’s time to certify, regulators apply frameworks designed for conventional aircraft. When it’s time to manufacture, the supply chain operates on century-old procurement models. When it’s time to operate, insurance companies and airports demand conventional safety margins and business structures.
One by one, the innovations in business model and operational thinking get stripped away. What remains is revolutionary aircraft powered by outdated systems.
The AIAA white paper on AAM commercialization challenges identifies this clearly: AAM’s scalability depends on replacing traditional frameworks with networked solutions, yet current policies impose prohibitive costs that favor established models. NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility Mission is working to enable integration, but the fundamental business structures haven’t evolved to match the technical innovation.
The Efficiency We’re Leaving on the Table
Consider what we’re sacrificing by clinging to old models:
Electric aircraft are 2.1 to 3.2 times more energy efficient during cruise than comparable fossil-fueled aircraft, according to ICCT research. Battery electric aircraft have no direct emissions and potentially much lower operational and maintenance costs, creating far less noise pollution.
Studies show that electric aircraft use approximately 5 kilowatt-hours per kilometer in electric mode, while internal combustion engine aircraft use 11.2 kilowatt-hours per kilometer. Carbon emissions drop from 2.97 kilograms of carbon per kilometer for conventional aircraft to 0.80 kilograms for electric aircraft.
Yet we structure AAM businesses as if operating costs, maintenance requirements, and environmental impact will remain the same. We apply insurance rates based on conventional aircraft risk profiles. We design vertiport operations around fueling infrastructure rather than charging infrastructure. We plan route networks using assumptions about noise tolerance from helicopter operations.
The innovation stops at the aircraft door.
What’s Really Holding Us Back
The challenge isn’t technical ignorance. Everyone in the industry understands that electric propulsion changes the equation. The challenge is institutional inertia combined with misaligned incentives.
Financial models still prioritize maximizing short-term output and profit, treating environmental and social costs as externalities. Certification processes designed for jet engines struggle to evaluate electric propulsion systems fairly. Insurance companies lack actuarial data for new aircraft types, so they default to conservative assumptions. Airport operators fear the capital investment required to install charging infrastructure without guaranteed utilization.
Most critically, the people making these decisions aren’t incentivized to change them. A finance executive gets rewarded for hitting quarterly targets using proven models, not for implementing untested approaches that might work better in five years. A regulatory official faces career risk from approving something new that fails, but no penalty for delaying innovation through overcautious application of old rules.
As Deloitte’s AAM analysis notes, 82% of industry respondents expect commercial operations with advanced automation to begin by 2034, but only if multiple stakeholders—manufacturers, operators, governments, suppliers, investors, and academia—successfully partner to integrate AAM safely. The technical timeline exists. The institutional alignment does not.
The Pattern We Need to Break
Here’s what typically happens when someone tries to introduce a genuinely new business model in AAM:
Startup founders propose a membership model for air taxi services instead of per-flight pricing. Investors push back: “How will you prove unit economics match traditional charter?” The model gets abandoned.
Operators suggest community-owned vertiport infrastructure, spreading costs and benefits locally. Municipalities respond: “We don’t have frameworks for public-private partnerships in aviation.” The proposal dies.
Manufacturers offer operator-as-a-service models, handling maintenance and upgrades. Buyers decline: “We need to own the assets for our balance sheet.” The arrangement reverts to traditional purchase.
Each time, the rationale makes sense within existing frameworks. But existing frameworks are exactly what needs to change.
What Actually Needs to Happen
Real progress in AAM requires rethinking the entire system, not just the propulsion. This means:
Financial structures that reward lifecycle efficiency over short-term output. Instead of maximizing flights per aircraft per day, optimize for total cost of ownership, environmental impact, and community benefit over twenty years. As research indicates, ambitious reductions in demand and improvements in aircraft energy efficiency could avoid up to 61% and 27% of projected aviation emissions, respectively, by 2050—but only with business models that incentivize these outcomes.
Manufacturing approaches that minimize extraction impact. Whether mining lithium or drilling petroleum, we need closed-loop systems that recycle materials, renewable energy powering operations, and true cost accounting that includes environmental restoration. The [U.S. Advanced Air Mobility National Strategy](https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2025-12/AAM National Strategy 2025.pdf) acknowledges that infrastructure typically takes several years and must fit within local budgets and land-use processes—requiring new financial frameworks.
Regulatory frameworks designed for innovation, not just safety through prevention. Safety remains paramount, but we need approaches that evaluate new technologies on their actual risk profiles, not on conservative assumptions based on different technologies. The FAA’s integration of powered-lift certification represents progress, but the application of century-old business frameworks to certification timelines and costs undermines it.
Insurance models based on data, not tradition. Electric aircraft have fewer moving parts, simpler maintenance, and different failure modes than conventional aircraft. Risk assessment should reflect these differences.
Infrastructure investment that recognizes different operational patterns. Electric aircraft need charging infrastructure, not fuel trucks. They can operate from smaller spaces with less noise. They enable distributed networks rather than hub-and-spoke models. Planning should reflect these realities.
The Choice We Face
We can continue pretending that revolutionary aircraft can succeed within conventional systems. We can keep complaining about the old ways while perpetuating them through our choices. We can wait for someone else to solve the structural problems while we optimize within existing constraints.
Or we can acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: without systemic change in how we fund, certify, manufacture, insure, and operate aircraft, AAM will remain perpetually “five years away”—not because the technology isn’t ready, but because the systems surrounding it won’t evolve.
The Advanced Air Mobility industry has seen massive investment, with companies like Joby, Archer, Volocopter, and others raising billions. Technical progress is real—aircraft are flying, certifications are advancing, multiports and STOLPorts are being built. But as TCS notes in their AAM analysis, both incumbent aerospace firms and new entrants are converging on sophisticated strategies, yet the economic model is still shifting toward traditional network-centric optimization, paralleling airline paradigms.
Moving Forward
True sustainability—in aviation or any industry—comes not from switching materials but from redesigning systems. It comes from business models that internalize rather than externalize costs. It comes from financial structures that reward long-term value creation over short-term extraction. It comes from manufacturing processes that close loops rather than draw straight lines from mine to landfill.
It comes from people willing to make different choices, even when those choices are harder within existing systems.
Electric aircraft can deliver on their promise of quieter, cleaner, more efficient flight. But only if we stop trying to force 21st-century technology into 20th-century business models.
The obstacles aren’t technical. They’re institutional, financial, and—most fundamentally—they’re about courage. The courage to actually do things differently, not just talk about it.
There are more solutions than obstacles. The question is whether we’ll choose them.
Continue the Conversation
Explore more insights on Advanced Air Mobility innovation:
- Listen to The Ways We Move podcast for in-depth interviews with industry leaders
- Read the latest AAM news and analysis at Electric Air Mobility
- Learn about AAM integration strategies from industry veterans