Urban Air Mobility Profitability and Operational Sensitivity to Battery and Charging Technology

Abstract

Designs for electric vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft deviate from traditional aircraft designs and include a wide variety of different configurations. Significant uncertainty also exists regarding the status of future battery technology, including energy density and charge rates. This paper presents a simple analytic model to estimate the profitability of an urban air mobility electric VTOL aircraft for a variety of vehicle configurations, battery technology parameters, and economic factors. Five main elements are considered by the framework: aircraft performance, battery technology, mission profile, mission economics, and electrical grid parameters. A sensitivity analysis is provided, comparing the operational performance and profitability of three electric VTOL concepts (lift plus cruise, quadcopter, and side by side), with respect to electrical grid and battery technology factors. The takeoff weight to maximize the number of completed routes or the overall profitability is also examined. Interestingly, results show that these two values do not coincide across the entire design space due to the nonlinearity of the battery life cycle with respect to the depth of discharge, which strongly affects battery replacement cost.