Fuel Cells for Urban Air Mobility: Performance and Cost Analysis
Urban air mobility (UAM) is as an emerging concept of passenger and cargo transportation with piloted and increasingly autonomous operations. Several companies are developing enabling elements of UAM for air taxis, including prototypes of vertical take-off landing (VTOL) vehicles, operational concepts, and potential business models. The VTOL prototypes incorporate electric and hybrid powertrains for the UAM market, including multi-rotor and tilt-rotor crafts. Electric propulsion systems are especially attractive for air taxis because of potentially lower environmental and noise pollution. Many eVTOLS are using batteries for propulsion and charging them rapidly between the flights or swapping them for slow charging overnight. Rapid charging degrades the battery cycle life while swapping requires multiple batteries and charging stations. This study has conducted a technoeconomic evaluation of the eVTOL air taxis with alternate powertrains using hydrogen fuel cell systems being developed for light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles. The authors consider performance metrics such as fuel cell engine power, weight, and durability; hydrogen consumption and weight of storage system; and maximum take-off weight. The metrics for economic evaluation are capital cost, operating and maintenance cost, fuel cost, and the total cost of ownership (TCO). The authors compare the performance and TCO of battery, fuel cell and fuel cell – battery hybrid powertrains for multi-rotor and tilt-rotor crafts. The authors show that fuel cells are the only viable concept for powering multi-rotor eVTOLs on an urban scenario that requires 60-mile range, and hybrid fuel cells are superior to batteries as powertrains for tiltrotor eVTOLs.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AV095 Standing Committee on New Users of Shared Airspace.
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Corporate Authors:
Transportation Research Board
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Authors:
- Ahluwalia, Rajesh K
- Peng, Jui-Kun
- Papadias, Dionissios
- Kopasz, John Peter
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 100th Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2021-1-5 to 2021-1-29
- Date: 2021
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Web
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 19p
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Air taxi service; Costs; Fuel cell vehicles; Helicopters; Hydrogen fuels; Tiltrotor aircraft; Vehicle performance; VTOL aircraft
- Identifier Terms: Urban Air Mobility
- Subject Areas: Aviation; Economics; Energy;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01763827
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: TRBAM-21-03051
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Feb 4 2021 10:57AM