Forecasting market opportunities for urban and regional air mobility

Abstract

Analysts predict that future air taxis will fundamentally change the travel behavior of society. However, current market forecasts for air taxi demand varies widely because of inconsistencies in assumptions about travel purpose, technology acceptance, time savings, affordability, and safety. To successfully deploy Advanced Air Mobility (AAM), stakeholders need to reliably forecast routes where demand will be highest. To increase reliability, this study focuses on the Uber Elevate multimodal use case and combines top-down and bottom-up methodologies to forecast demand. The hybrid methodology forecasts demand within four distance bands from 100 miles to 400 miles, in 100-mile increments. Forecasting within distance bands informs a range roadmap for electrified vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. Geographic information system (GIS) and network trimming techniques identify 2083 viable routes among 859 U.S. cities. The findings are that approximately 78,000 passengers daily will access at most 4214 vertipads to fly on 3023 four-passenger eVTOL aircraft. Serving routes within the first 100-mile band will require two and five times more capital for aircraft and vertiports, respectively, than for longer routes. AAM stakeholders can utilize the hybrid methodology to forecast demand for specific routes in other regions of the world and for additional use cases.