Airbus Unveils Next-Generation CityAirbus as a Safe Solution for Urban Air Mobility
At its first summit on the theme "Innovation in a Sustainable Aerospace Industry," Airbus announced plans to develop a next-generation CityAirbus as the emerging urban air mobility (UAM) market begins to take shape.
The fully electric vehicle representing the next-generation CityAirbus features fixed wings, a V-shaped tail and eight electrically driven propellers as part of a unique distributed propulsion system. It is designed to carry up to four passengers in zero-emission flight for a variety of applications.
“We are on the path to creating an entirely new market that integrates sustainably into the city's urban air mobility while addressing environmental and social challenges. Airbus is convinced that the real challenges lie not only in urban integration, public acceptance and automated air traffic management, but also in vehicle technology and business models. We are using every opportunity to provide society with safe, sustainable and fully integrated services”
CityAirbus is being developed for flights of up to 80 km and speeds of 120 km/h, making it ideally suited for operating in large cities and performing a variety of tasks. These characteristics may not seem especially impressive, but they are more than sufficient for getting around the city, given that it can easily bypass any traffic jam. For example, a trip from Manhattan to Brooklyn on this vehicle would take no more than a few minutes.
Noise level is a key factor for an urban mission. Thanks to the company's extensive experience in designing noise-reducing structures, the noise level of CityAirbus is below 65 dB in flight and below 70 dB during landing. It is optimized for hover and cruise efficiency (constant-speed flight mode), while requiring no moving surfaces or tilting parts during transition.
CityAirbus NextGen meets the highest certification standards (EASA SC-VTOL Enhanced Category). The next-generation vehicle, designed with simplicity in mind, will offer best-in-class operating and support economics.
Airbus draws on years of research, innovation, two electric vertical takeoff and landing demonstrators and noise technology development in its portfolio, as well as its experience in aircraft certification. The Vahana demonstrator (a single-seat aircraft optimized for cruise flight) and CityAirbus (an original multirotor aircraft matching the next-generation design in size and weight) together completed 242 flight and ground tests and flew a total of about 1,000 km.
“We have spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours on all aspects of eVTOL design. We even flew over the city, measured how sound spreads in that city and its impact on people on the ground, to understand in what sense such a vehicle needs to be optimized”
Müller said the company carried out extensive computer simulations, conducted several wind tunnel tests with full-scale propellers and set up test rigs to study noise.
The company used extensive flight tests and wind tunnel campaigns, as well as its computing power and simulation capabilities. CityAirbus NextGen is currently in the detailed design stage, with the first prototype flight planned for 2023.
“We learned a great deal during the test campaigns with our two demonstrators, CityAirbus and Vahana. CityAirbus NextGen combines the best of both worlds with a new architecture that provides the right balance between hovering and forward flight. The prototype paves the way for certification, expected around 2025”
Beyond the vehicles, the company is working with partners, cities and city residents to build the ecosystem needed to turn this new operating environment into a real service for society to use.
Airbus first presented the CityBus concept back in 2019. However, the design then resembled an eVTOL (Electric Vertical Take Off and Landing) vehicle, had eight rotors and was flown autonomously. Now the company has reworked the design and form factor of the vehicle, making it smoother with a new futuristic aesthetic reminiscent of devices from science fiction films.
ExecutiveTraveller writes that this is the company's attempt to enter the developing urban air mobility market. The first generation of CityAirbus, conceived in 2016, was meant to be a taxi service that could bypass city traffic by simply flying over it. Historically, this kind of intra-city transport has been provided by noisy helicopters, such as the Voom helicopter taxi startup, which no longer exists today, the Airbus Vahana electric flying car, or Uber Copter.
