What Does Future Look Like for Urban Air Mobility Concept?

For years, people have dreamt of flying cars! The DeLorean, portrayed in the popular 1980s sci-fi movie trilogy Back to the Future,perhaps gave bigger wings to this dream. With the increasing number of vehicles around the world, there is barely enough space for pedestrians to walk and new automobiles to fit in. On average, people in the U.S. are spending 90 hours every year in traffic jams, which is leading to an around $1,000 annualrise in their commuting expenses.

Additionally, as per the World Health Organization (WHO), around 1.36 million people die on the roads every year. Thus, a need is being felt to somehow take off, or at least reduce, the traffic on the roads. This is why P&S Intelligence expects the urban air mobility market to value $6,889.4 million by 2030, growing from $895.0 million in 2023 at a massive 33.9% CAGR between 2023 and 2030 (forecast period). UAM involves the provision of short-to-mid-range transportation services via autonomous or piloted vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft powered by electricity.

In the same vein, another trend in the urban air mobility market is the heavy investments being poured for the exploration of the feasibility of the concept and turning it into reality. For instance, Joby Aviation LLC, which is developing eVTOL vehicles, received $394 million from Toyota Motor Corp. in January 2020. With this investment, Toyota is aiming to enter the UAM niche and serve the evolving transportation demand. In another such development, Hanwha Systems Co. Ltd. had invested $25 million in Overair Inc.in December 2019.

Thus, with UAM being a new concept, R&D, to come up with better technology and safety assurance, is key for its growth and adoption.

Source: P&S Intelligence