How VTOLs Can Ease Congestion in Cities and Improve Mobility
Cities change constantly to meet the demands of society, facing new challenges including traffic congestion, pollution, and far-from-optimal transit systems. In this context, Urban Air Mobility (UAM) emerges as a potential solution to alleviate congestion and improve urban transportation. Electric Vertical Take-off and Landing Vehicles (VTOLs), which have the potential to completely change how people move around increasingly congested urban areas, might redefine transportation.
VTOLs offer many advantages compared to traditional land-based transportation modes. Firstly, their vertical take-off and landing capability allows them to operate from helipads or even specially designated urban spaces, thus avoiding the need for already congested land-based infrastructures such as roads or train stations. This would mean that VTOLs can reduce travel times and alleviate congestion on land routes. Furthermore, because VTOLs operate at high altitudes, they can easily avoid not only ground traffic but also obstacles, offering quicker commutes and avoiding delays, which in the end, improve greatly user satisfaction.
To move this new reality forward, we are seeing examples of collaborations to implement this technology. In the beginning of 2024, EHang, a company specializing in eVTOL aircrafts, partnered with Telefónica Tech. Thanks to Telefónica Tech’s connectivity capabilities, including 5G and private networks, EHang aims to enhance the safety and efficiency of UAM operations in Europe and Latin America. This partnership not only showcases the potential of VTOLs to transform urban mobility but also, in a more general note, highlights the power of collaboration in advancing transformative technology.
Before this collaboration, EHang had already begun its activity in Spain, as they inaugurated the first European UAM Center in Spain on November 1st, 2023. Located within the Lleida–Alguaire International Airport (LEDA), this center marks a pioneering initiative in Europe for unmanned eVTOLs. EHang’s establishment of the UAM Center sets the path for the integration of eVTOL aircraft operations within an airport’s infrastructure, air traffic management systems, operational procedures, and other information technologies, promoting the widespread adoption of eVTOL technology globally.
As proved by this example, large companies are working towards this vision because of the potential immense positive impact of VTOLs could have on urban mobility. However, realizing this goal requires not only technological advancements but also regulatory frameworks that support the safe integration of VTOLs into urban airspace.
The regulation needed to operate drones is not only limited to airspace management, certification and safety standards, infrastructure requirements or noise regulations. We also have to think about the regulation to operate, parking management (which can be an enormous hurdle in certain cities) or even maximum loads. Nevertheless, partnerships between industry leaders and technology providers signal a future where VTOLs play a more central role in urban transportation networks.
VTOLs promise a transformative shift in urban mobility, envisioning skies as another mean to navigate from A to B. Through collaboration, innovation, and regulation, it is possible to develop VTOLs’ full potential and complement the current urban mobility transportation methods.
