Future regional air mobility analysis using conventional, electric, and autonomous vehicles

Recent activities in electric propulsion and autonomy provide opportunity to improve both regional and urban air mobility. The inclusion of electric propulsion and the promise of autonomy to simplify flight operations could provide benefits that lead to wider use of small aircraft for regional transportation. The effort here presents a computational analysis framework to evaluate three different modes of transportation (airline, automobile, and air taxi); the air taxi service options consider different conventional takeoff and landing aircraft options powered by either conventional fuels or electricity with various levels of autonomy to assess potential advantages. The framework is developed in two variants: a specific trip model and a generic trip model. The specific trip approach leverages Google Maps and Rome2Rio application programming interfaces for driving and flight information, respectively, whereas the generic approach uses curve-fit/approximate models derived from the specific trip model for rapid calculations of trip time and cost for various system-level market studies. Potential market sensitivity study reveals that the inclusion of distributed propulsion, autonomy, ride-sharing, and aircraft production rate all impact the market attractiveness of the on-demand air taxi operations. Of these, an increased level of autonomy and the ability to facilitate ride-sharing are the two most important factors that affect the market attractiveness of regional air mobility. © AIAA International. All rights reserved.