How Soon Until Your Taxi Can Fly?

Will it be 2025 or 2035? Depends on who you ask...

May 17, 2024

Fun fact - Amelia Earhart is best known for being the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. What’s not as well known is that she was also a best-selling author. She published books her life and famous transatlantic.

The conspiracy theory surrounding her “death” is that she crash landed on Nikumaroro Island in the Pacific Ocean in 1937 and lived for years like Tom Hanks in Cast Away.

If she could fly planes like that 90 years ago, we have to be able to figure out eVTOLs.

Let’s jump in!

What you need to know in eVTOLs this week

Lilum

Germany based Lilium is eying several sites in France for the expansion of their new high-volume eVTOL manufacturing facilities.

Details need to be worked out with the French government around potential subsidies and loan guarantees but those are expected to wrap up in the coming weeks.

The planned commercial service launch is 2026 and Lilium has 780 (non binding) agreements already in place so they better get going.

AutoFlight

Fresh off receiving type certification from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), AutoFlight completed an autonomous cargo eVTOL flight at Shanghai Pudong airport.

Although the test flight involved a cargo aircraft, AutoFlight’s sales pitch is a 10 minute ride between the airport and city center for passengers.

I’d love to see AutoFlight’s eVTOL race Shanghai’s famous Maglev Train. The bullet train gets up to 268MPH and goes from from southeast Pudong (which is not exactly the city center) to the airport in 8 minutes.

China’s growing middle class has learned to embrace capitalism so not a stretch to think they will support competing options.

Vertical Aerospace

Here come the lawsuits…

Vertical Aerospace is suing one of its (former) suppliers, ProDrive Composites, a developer of structures and rotor-blades.

The lawsuit stems from a forced landing that occurred in 2023 causing damage shown in the picture above.

The UK’s Air Accident and Investigation Branch (AAIB) just published an accident investigation reports that states a “propeller blade detached from the electric propulsion unit 3 forward motor due to a failure of the adhesive bond between the propeller blade sheath and spar.”

Regardless of the legal outcome, it’s not a great look for all involved.

Horizon Aircraft

Horizon Aircraft is half way there.

The company built a 50% scale model—which is 15 feet long, has a 22-foot wingspan and weighs roughly 500 pounds—to test the plane’s hovering and eventually work on transitioning from hovering to cruising.

The plan is for the aircraft, dubbed “Cavorite X7” to carry one pilot and up to six people with as much as 1,500 pounds of useful load. 

Their Go-To-Market plan is a bit different than the air-taxi and regional passenger flights model of other plyers in the space.

Horizon plans on helping deliver critical medical supplies to remote communities, enabling the medevac of injured patients to a hospital nearly twice as fast as a traditional helicopter and responding to natural disasters more promptly and effectively.

Elroy Air

You thought no one hated running errands more than you?

Turns out the US Marine Corps does… And they’re doing something about it.

In July the USMC will be testing Elroy Air’s “Medium Aerial Resupply Vehicle – Expeditionary Logistics” (MARV-EL) prototype.

The aircraft is designed to offer rapid response logistics support to Marine Corps units engaged in advanced base operations and other distributed missions, providing a resupply service when traditional manned or ground transport options are impracticable.

What does that mean?

Instead of flying or trucking supplies to inconvenient locations, just load up an autonomous drone and hit go.

The Markets

Or “The Casino” if you prefer the Wall Street Bets mentality…

All quite on the western front (anyone get the reference? It’s a great book).

Lilium and New Horizon saw some fluctuation but likely not anything meaningful in given the expected turbulence in this niche.

The Life Savings Bet

"We think diversification — as practiced generally — makes very little sense for anyone that knows what they’re doing. Diversification is a protection against ignorance..."

-Warren Buffett, 1996

Sir, Yes Sir! Loud and clear. No diversification here.

Do I know what I am doing by putting all $100K of my investable cash into Joby?

Time will tell…

So are we in the money?!

Nope. Our break even is $5.22 and the stock is trading at $5.05 so down a couple grand overall.

But we’re fighting the good fight and wouldn’t mind if we held study here for a bit.

Lighten Up

Final Question

Should you tip an eVTOL pilot like an Uber driver? Or no tip because if you don’t tip the Delta Airlines pilot, why would you tip the eVTOL pilot? — best reply gets a shoutout next week.

Best Answer From Last Week

I asked “What airport lounge should vertiports try to emulate?”

Best reply came from Ben in Florida:

“KayanJet Lounge in St. Kitts is the best in world. The Plaza Premium Lounge in Puerto Vallarta is the worst. Vertiports should aim for something on the top end of that spectrum… So I guess Centurion Lounges?

Thanks for reading and let us know what you want to see more of next week. We read every single reply.

Stay above.

— The Above Traffic Team

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