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1. The Demands of Flying Taxi: Traffic Jam
The first thing to be mentioned for understanding the Flying Taxi market is of course, why is there a demand for Flying Taxi in the first place? The answer: Road Traffic Congestion.
The market for satisfying this demand is known as Urban Air Mobility Market, or in simpler words, moving from one point to another in a city via air means. In other words, this market is solely focused on urban (city) area and not rural/countryside area that doesn't have much traffic congestion problem.
For instance in Malaysia, Capital A (AirAsia) has been cooperating with United Kingdom's vertiports builders (Skyports) to study where the vertiports should be located in Malaysia, specifically the capital city Kuala Lumpur for sure due to its severe traffic congestion issue. These vertiports are the places for aircraft to execute VTOL (Vertical Take-off and Landing) operation, which is pretty similar to a heliport, no tremendous area of land is needed for this vertiports.
The potential vertiport locations are targeted to be those hotspots of a city such as famous shopping mall, train/bus station and airport as well so that the high demands to avoid traffic congestion at these high density population areas could be satisfied.
Illustration of Capital A's Flying Taxi at Kuala Lumpur.
2. Not to Solve Traffic Congestion, just an Alternative Transportation
However, it is apparently not that practical to act as the solution for traffic congestion on the road but only an alternative options for those who wish not to waste time on the road. Firstly, the price for using this taxi service is expected to be around 50 US dollars for one trip according to report. Thus, besides those who are rich enough to afford or urgent enough to avoid the congestion, the rest of the society would most likely save their money with wasting time on the road.
Secondly, there will be limited Flying Taxi operating in the sky for the same time as the sky above Kuala Lumpur isn't that vast either. In order to shorten the time of the Flying Taxi ride, a much straighter route will be required thus increase the overlapping condition of route while to reduce the risk of mid-air collision, perhaps the flight time required for a single ride has to be extended due to the deviation of route for safety consideration. Nevertheless, the Flying Taxi has a very limited seats capacity which it's not possible to act as a public transportation to transfer the traffic burden from ground onto the sky.
Thirdly, flying is heavily affected by weather condition. On a severely rainy/windy/hazy day, you can still drive if you want to but you cannot fly even if you have to. When it comes to aviation, safety is always the priority and no risky maneuver is allowed, which will be not convenient compared to road transport.
Last but not least, people likes the feeling of taking control such as driving their own vehicle and that will be another factor stopping people to proactively pay others to send them. Therefore, unless people can choose to fly the Flying Taxi just like how every single Malaysian can drive their own car freely, the driving culture of Malaysia will most likely restrain us on the ground.
In summary, the most important thing that stops Malaysian from taking Flying Taxi is not just technical difficulties but the affordability of using it. In other words, the macroeconomic environment of Malaysia when the Flying Taxi are officially launched will strongly determine how the market will react and respond as this service is like the consumer's attitude towards Business class and Economic class.
Malaysia has been suffering from haze/air pollution from time to time despite severe thunderstorm and rain has already reduced the upper limit of Malaysia's aviation industry safety level.
3.Isn't Flying Taxi basically a Helicopter Ride?
Yes, it is VTOL as well, just like helicopter. The difference between them is that this Flying Taxi is like the next generation helicopter as it is following the trend of the world regarding sustainability, green energy and less pollution. Consequently, the Flying Taxi is known as e-VTOL (electric-VTOL) aircraft as it is using electric instead of kerosene to operate its propeller thus no direct carbon dioxide emission and lesser sound produced from its operation.
In spite of the technology bottleneck as of now regarding the limited energy of electric powered vehicle, Airbus, Boeing, Hyundai, Joby Aviation and Vertical Aerospace have been continuously developing their product for the e-VTOL market based on this sustainability direction. Nonetheless, the e-VTOL aircraft that Capital A expects to use is the VX4 e-VTOL manufactured by Vertical Aerospace.
Image above shows the Airbus's "City Airbus" Flying Taxi, which Airbus is currently developing the more advanced "City Airbus Next Gen" Flying Taxi.
Boeing's Passenger Air Vehicle.
Vertical Aerospace's VX4.
4.Feasible or Unfeasible?
In order to objectively evaluate if Flying Taxi is feasible or unfeasible, argument to support both standpoints has to be stated.
Long story short, it is feasible if the macroeconomic environment of that society is good enough that people have the willingness to pay something that is not necessary unless the price is cheap enough that people thinks it's a worthy deal. Otherwise, people will not going to pay and making it an unfeasible market.
In conclusion, demands that will determine this market feasible or not are the wealthiness of the society and the urgency of avoiding the road traffic congestion (depends on how severe the traffic congestions are).
Last but not least, how those manufacturers and operators think? It is apparent that manufacturers are developing their products to follow the sustainable and green energy technology in the future instead of just investing for satisfying the Urban Air Mobility Market. Hence, we can expect the e-VTOL vehicle will be the first step for developing the electrical powered jumbo airlines in the future. While for those Flying Taxi operators such as Uber Elevate, they are most likely a FOMO (Fear-of-missing-out) victim who are trying to be the pioneer and probably seize the whole market if they guess it right that people are going to pay for this taxi and that's the case for Capital A as well.
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