OK - this is the 'extra crunch' edition :)
And what’s changed over the decades.
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Here's part of an Interview with Florian Reuter, CEO of Volocopter done by Azeem Azhar of Exponential View
“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” That was a bold claim by the prominent and controversial tech investor Peter Thiel, bemoaning the lack of innovation a decade ago. There is something about the flying car that seems alluring. It’s the freedom of mobility, but in three dimensions. And it’s no surprise that such vehicles have been heavily featured in fiction, from The Jetsons to Star Wars, and of course, Back to the Future.
About six or seven years ago, entrepreneurs started to found a series of companies that were going to tackle flying cars. And back then, I was skeptical. I was skeptical about the market opportunity. I was skeptical about how useful these vehicles would be. And I was skeptical about the economics. But I’m always willing to revisit my priors. In the latest podcast episode I try to do just that, in conversation with Florian Reuter, CEO of Volocopter, leading urban air mobility startup based in Germany.
Listen to the episode here, and read highlights below.
The big idea
As low-carbon road transport technologies mature, investors are looking for new opportunities and expanding into aviation. The majority of investment in aerospace startups to date has been in the urban air mobility space.
The big promise of Volocopter and its competitors lies in resolving congestion issues in major cities to offer a fast, electric alternative to long commutes and commercial transport. In London, for example, rush hour speeds are 6 kph on average. Now imagine taking a vehicle that can travel around 90 kph, that can take you from the City of London to Heathrow airport in a few minutes (instead of 30 minutes). As Florian says,
As diverse as the cities are across the globe, when we look at them individually, we always find some initial killer routes where we can show [ that a flying car] versus existing transportation options can provide you with massive time savings.
Volocopter’s fleet currently has three models: the VoloCity – a 2-seat electric aircraft capable of vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) designed for intracity travel; the VoloConnect – a 4-seat eVTOL designed for commutes between city hubs and the suburbs; and the VoloDrone – an uncrewed, electric drone designed for heavy-lift services.
Florian offered a breakdown of three phases of flying car integration into the transport systems.
Phase 1: Point-to-point rides focused on cutting the congestion on highly trafficked routes (e.g. downtown Manhattan to John F. Kennedy);
Phase 2: Expanding the ride network to cover relevant routes throughout the city in question;
Phase 3: Doorstep-on-demand, where passengers can order rides to and from anywhere they please. This will require 15-by-15 meter landing pads.
We can accommodate all of that based on the digitalisation capabilities we have nowadays. The only question now is how fast would these three phases succeed each other? In what given context? It might be faster in some geographies than in others, but I believe in 10, 20, 30 years down the road, this will be an everyday common mode of transport for all of us in every city around the world.
Because of the learning curves, manufacturing a flying car is expected to only get cheaper with higher production volumes. Florian’s vision is that the cost of making flying cars will be closer to a standard automobile than a plane:
That is why we have brought on Daimler and GTI, for example, as investors in Volocopter who are supporting us in mass producing our vehicles over time in the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands. If you now project these volumes and look at the bill of materials we have and the complexity of the individual components, I don’t see a reason why manufacturing these vehicles should be much more costly than a luxurious vehicle on the ground today.
To hear my full discussion with Florian, and learn more about the industry, listen to our conversation here via Exponential View