received limited authority for commercial flights<\/a> using a pilotless aircraft. The United Arab Emirates has also been preparing for commercial air taxi flights in partnership with Joby and a rival manufacturer, Archer Aviation.<\/p>\n\u201cThe U.S. still has the scars of the 2000s, where it abdicated the entire drone market to China,\u201d said Sergio Cecutta, an aerospace consultant. \u201cThe whole idea with this push from Washington is to make sure that this doesn\u2019t happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The federal program allows limited operations, including some commercial flights, which the air taxi companies say will help them gain flight experience and collect data. It also allows local government officials and residents to get more comfortable with the technology.<\/p>\n
But air taxi companies cannot begin regular commercial flights until the Federal Aviation Administration certifies the aircraft after rigorous tests. It is not clear how soon the agency will certify its first air taxi.<\/p>\n
There are three leading U.S. electric aviation companies: Joby, Archer and Beta Technologies. All three are developing aircraft that can take off and land like helicopters and move through the air like planes, while Beta is also developing a version that flies only like a plane, which it plans to bring to market first. A Boeing subsidiary, Wisk Aero, is also developing an air taxi, but that aircraft will be certified later, experts said, because it is expected to fly autonomously.<\/p>\n
Toyota is a major investor in Joby and providing it with manufacturing expertise. Archer has a similar partnership with Stellantis, the parent company of Fiat, Jeep and Ram. And GE Aerospace has invested in and is working on technology with Beta.<\/p>\n
The Joby demonstration flight departed from Kennedy before noon on April 27. It landed minutes later at the West 30th Street Heliport, a short walk from Penn Station. The helipad is often used by Blade, which connects cities to airports around the world with conventional helicopters. Blade sold its passenger business last year to Joby, which plans to eventually replace Blade\u2019s helicopters with its own aircraft.<\/p>\n
The most likely use of air taxis, which can generally fly short distances before needing to be recharged, is as a replacement for helicopters, which are noisy and relatively hard to maintain, experts said. In the more distant future, rich people may use electric aircraft as a replacement for chauffeured cars.<\/p>\n
How widely the aircraft are used will depend primarily on how much they cost to make, operate and maintain. Aviation experts are deeply divided on how that math will work out.<\/p>\n
Most analysts agree that air taxis will be expensive to produce at first. According to some experts, the aircraft could cost up to $5 million in the early days, as much as or more than a helicopter that can carry more passengers, travel farther and be refueled more easily. Production may also be difficult to speed up because air taxis use light and strong carbon composites, which are more expensive and difficult to make than the aluminum, titanium, steel and other metals traditionally used for helicopters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s this huge speed bump for the production,\u201d said Bjorn Fehrm, an aeronautical and economic analyst with Leeham, an aerospace consulting firm.<\/p>\n
Most experts say air taxis should have lower operating costs than helicopters, particularly if they fly often. The newer aircraft won\u2019t rely on expensive jet fuel and complicated mechanical components. As air taxi companies build more aircraft, their executives say, the cost of each one will fall.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing is you want to scale it out, and then the unit economics will fall in line,\u201d Joby\u2019s founder and chief executive, JoeBen Bevirt, said in an interview beside Joby\u2019s aircraft after it landed in Manhattan in April.<\/p>\n
But some experts say the intense power required to take off and land will strain the aircraft\u2019s batteries, potentially requiring frequent maintenance or replacement. They also say air taxis may not fly as often as their makers expect because they will be limited by weather conditions, local regulations, pilot availability and other issues.<\/p>\n
There will be other challenges. High-powered chargers will be needed at airports, heliports or anywhere else an air taxi may land. In a report<\/a> released last week, the Government Accountability Office said one airport estimated that the cost of providing charging infrastructure at one location could cost about $2 million.<\/p>\nEric Lentell, Archer\u2019s chief legal and strategy officer, said the industry was improving its technology and production methods to reduce costs, not unlike Tesla after it introduced its first model, the two-door Roadster sports car.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look back at that Roadster, you\u2019d be like, \u2018That wasn\u2019t a viable product in today\u2019s market,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But the biggest hurdle will be certification.<\/p>\n
New versions of existing jets produced by Boeing and Airbus can take many months or even years to win approval from the F.A.A. and its European counterpart. A completely new kind of plane could take longer. Aviation experts say regulators are likely to be even more cautious than they have been in the past because Boeing\u2019s 737 Max had two accidents in which everybody onboard was killed. Those crashes, in 2018 and 2019, occurred just a few years after the jet was certified.<\/p>\n
Joby, Archer and Beta have each made progress with the F.A.A. None has said it has begun certification flight testing with pilots employed by the agency, an important step, though Joby says it expects to start those flights this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Under a clear blue sky, a new kind of electric aircraft flew from Kennedy International Airport into the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[66625,3347,97531,97532,1183,97530,18491,97533,75,84,83,9,24,63,30483,10921,1876],"class_list":["post-249910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-airlines-and-airplanes","tag-airports","tag-archer-aviation-inc","tag-blade-inc","tag-federal-aviation-administration","tag-flying-cars","tag-helicopters","tag-joby-aero-inc-joby-aviation","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-regulation-and-deregulation-of-industry","tag-travel-and-vacations","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}