A City-centric Approach to Estimate and Evaluate Global Urban Air Mobility Demand

TL;DR

This paper introduces a city-centric forecasting method to estimate global urban air mobility demand, emphasizing the importance of low ticket prices and high vertiport densities for market growth by 2050.

Contribution

It presents a novel city-specific demand estimation approach for UAM, enabling global demand projections and scenario analysis for future urban air mobility development.

Findings

Over 200 cities could have UAM markets by 2050 under certain conditions.

Demand significantly drops with increased ticket prices.

High vertiport density and low ticket prices are crucial for market viability.

Abstract

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is expected to effectively complement the existing transportation system by providing fast and safe travel options, contributing to decarbonization, and providing benefits to citizens and communities. A preliminary estimate of the potential global demand for UAM, the associated aircraft movements, and the required vehicles is essential for the UAM industry for their long-term planning, but also of interest to other stakeholders such as governments and transportation planners to develop appropriate strategies and actions to implement UAM. This paper proposes a city-centric forecasting methodology that provides preliminary estimates of the potential global UAM demand for intra-city air taxi services for 990 cities worldwide. By summing all city-specific results, an estimate of the global UAM demand is obtained. By varying the parameters of the UAM system, sensitivity studies and different market scenarios are developed and analyzed. Sensitivity analyses show how strongly demand decreases when air taxi ticket prices increase. Considering low ticket prices and high vertiport densities, possible market development scenarios show that there is a market potential for UAM in over 200 cities worldwide by 2050. The study highlights the significant impact of low ticket prices and the need for high vertiport densities to drive UAM demand. This highlights the need for careful optimization of system components to minimize costs and increase the quality of UAM services.