电动航空｜优步Elevate项目创始人马克·摩尔点评eVTOL各大研发者
一、产品定义（Product Definition），包括：
1、能满足主要市场需求的产品设计要求。
2、能满足相关指标的设计可行性。
3、能否具有市场竞争力的经济性分析
二、是否具备可落实的关键的发展规划 （Critical Path Roadmap）
1、从设计、测试到量产的具体计划。
2、适航审定计划和与适航管理部门的交流。
3、严格的试飞程序。
三、市场执行和运营架构（Market Implementation and operational constructs）
1、使产品功能与运营相匹配的商业计划。
2、确保机队安全运营的基础性工作安排。
3、从试点城市到全国市场的实施计划
四、跨产品设计、项目规划和市场开发的风险规避和缓释措施（Risk Avoidance and mitigation）
1、技术壁垒。
2、适航审定的不确定性。
3、市场壁垒。
五、实施eVTOL产品开发所需的资源（Resources）
1、团队规模/经验。
2、适航审定和量产所需的资金。
3、重要的伙伴关系。
摘自：电动航空报道、Linkedin
马克·摩尔认为，该公司组建了业内最全面的eVTOL团队，在非常短的时间内从Wisk、空客的Vahana项目、Joby、Piper等公司招募了大量人员(马克·摩尔也刚受聘成为Archer公司的顾问)，而说服这些人离开先前的公司是一个有力的考察指标，招人工作的成功说明了Archer公司为何能够比其他任何eVTOL都更快地获得投资人的青睐并能够采取SPAC的方式实现上市。
在自主飞控方面遥遥领先，并且由于Geoff Long的加入而拥有了一些最好的eVTOL电驱技术。Wisk和Joby都拥有十多年的eVTOL研制经验，比其他任何项目的经验都更为丰富。Wisk公司的Cora eVTOL采用的复合式设计降低了系统复杂性，但是，马克·摩尔认为，Wisk的产品设计对UAM的市场需求可能缺乏针对性，没有根据市场的需求来指导其Cora eVTOL的产品开发，主要是Cora的飞行速度和载荷不足，如果必须要有飞行员的话，那么Cora的产品竞争力就不足，而目前来看，航管部门可能还需要很长时间才会批准没有飞行员的真正的全自主飞行。
Several methods have been developed to rank eVTOL developers (e.g. SMG Consulting and Lufthansa). I’m convinced these rankings are flawed and result in misunderstanding of many developer's probability of success. The evaluators don’t have access to sufficient information or have enough experience to indicate that one is better than another. There’s a lot to understand to make judgement calls across these companies, from the enabling technologies and how they're used, to the configurations strengths and weaknesses, to mapping desired capabilities into realistic product requirements, to developing a market strategy that is based on a rational business plan basis, to certification challenges and risk identification. There are a ton of competing metrics to trade-off, and unless you have significant experience with these new electric technologies, you’ve lived designing these eVTOL aircraft for a decade, and been wrestling with how to turn concepts into certified products that customers will buy – you don’t have a chance of making the right judgement calls. Seeing eHang listed #1 in one of these lists recently convinced me it was time to propose a more meaningful basis of comparison, and go through each eVTOL developer to show where they stand.
Instead of trying to pick one winner over another, I propose tiering companies across specific threshold criteria that are more objective and less subjective. My initial list of evaluation criteria include the following.
Product Definition that will lead to successful aircraft
Requirements alignment to significant market capture
Configuration feasibility across relevant metrics
Economic analysis that validates competitive positioning
Critical Path Roadmap that can be executed in a timely manner
Pathway defined from design to testing and production
Certification plan and regulatory engagement
Rigorous flight test program
Market Implementation and operational constructs that ensure success
Business plan that aligns product capabilities to robust operations
Fleet basis to ensure safe operations
City-Country implementation plan
Risk Avoidance and mitigation across the product, pathway and market
Technology gaps
Certification uncertainties
Market blockers
Resources to execute the eVTOL development program
Team size/experience
Available funding to reach certification and production
Partnerships that enable focused execution
Each of these criteria can be objectively evaluated so you know if an eVTOL developer is real, or on thin ice. So cutting to the chase, I’ve tiered the developers into the following categories.
Lead Developers
Enticing Developers, But Not There Yet
Developers that Don’t Make Sense to Me
Developers Where I Don’t Know Enough
In subsequent articles I'll go into depth on each company and each criteria, but with this post I will instead limit myself to a few comments across the criteria that most impress or concern me.
Certain Lead Developers – Joby, Archer, and Wisk. These eVTOL developers are very real programs who are likely to be the winners as consolidation happens in the future. I could say lots of positive things about each company across each criteria. In particular each stands out from other eVTOL developers in terms of the level of resources available. Each has a team with the highest qualifications, a level of funding that ensures they have the resources to get through certification, and partnerships that are world class.
Joby is the furthest ahead with flight testing, and has an awesome configuration with most of the components developed in a vertically integrated fashion. It is a sleek Corvette of an eVTOL, and has a perfectionist lead engineer who wants to make sure everything about it is optimal. Joby is also the furthest ahead with certification and the only developer who has announced achieving their G1. I believe their flight demonstrators are close in design to what a future certified product may look like, and if their SPAC closes they’ll have more funding than anyone - along with one of the best manufacturing partners in the world with Toyota. My concern is that the more I analyze different eVTOL configurations, the less I believe a hex configuration makes the most sense. The resulting rotor size on the articulating nacelles results in cyclic loading challenges that make me worry about maintenance. In addition the power margin required to handle a failed rotor is extremely high and could result in thermal challenges (remember the opposite rotor also needs to cut power for the aircraft balance, so one rotor failure results in a loss of 33% of the total available power). I love the focus on achieving low noise, but I’m not yet convinced that the remarkable hover video they released with their SPAC announcement will be as quiet during transition when cyclic loading is highest. Joby is at a critical juncture where it’s all about their ability to graduate to a highly disciplined aerospace company with detailed and exacting processes to get through certification. I hope that their organizational structure is up for the challenge, and am betting with many of you who have also bought RTP that they will be successful.
Archer has assembled the most comprehensively experienced eVTOL team in the industry, pulling from Wisk, Airbus Vahana, Joby, Piper, etc – and in a remarkably short time. Convincing this amount of talent to leave the other leading companies is a strong indicator of something. Combining this with Archer being able to achieve SPAC funding before anyone else, and with such a high quality investor baseis clear proof that their team is executing better than other developers. I’ve done a detailed review of their engineering efforts, and frankly I’d rather be developing their eVTOL than any other. There’s a risk reduction strategy that shows the team has been through this before. Proof of this exists in the healthy margins they’ve built into the design that maximize the probability of being successful. Almost every other developer I’ve evaluated has a scary degree of optimism that should make any Chief Engineer panic. Such optimism becomes extremely painful as aircraft go through certification and end up heavier than predicted, with component sizing spiraling out of control because of the high growth factors relating to eVTOL. As a first certification product, I’d rather have a 12 rotor that has increased redundancy and lower emergency power sizing overhead for a failed rotor (16% versus Joby’s 32%). I also like having smaller rotors that can accommodate articulation with smaller cyclic loading. But with a higher number of propulsors comes increased complexity, which must be managed effectively. Certification is the biggest risk for eVTOL developers (who have sufficient resources), and I’d rather be pragmatic as a fast follower with a design that has less dependency on optimized performance. Across the board what I like most about Archer is that they’ve managed to de-risk the critical path better than anyone else. And along with that de-risking, they’ve closed the gap left by Elevate’s departure by bringing in a billion dollar United customer order. No one has accomplished so much so fast in the eVTOL world – and after interacting closely with their team, I’m sure that they’re going to be able to continue this into the future.
Wisk is the furthest ahead in terms of autonomy, and has some of the best eVTOL propulsion technology around thanks to Geoff Long. Wisk and Joby have been in development longer than any others, with over a decade of experience. The Lift plus Cruise configuration has kept the configuration complexity to the lowest level possible. However, Wisk hasn’t appeared to understand UAM market requirements or have developed a product roadmap that guided Cora’s development. I’m hoping that with recent Wisk management change that their product focus will improve, and that they’ll show another configuration with a higher speed and larger payload that achieves higher productivity with near-term market relevance and that doesn’t depend on autonomy ( IMO it’s going to take a decade for significant autonomous operations to be approved). One of my key questions is whether the Boeing partnership they have is strength or a weakness. A year ago it looked like an awesome match that ensured Wisk would have a comprehensive set of aerospace resources that ensured success. But with the severity of the issues Boeing has faced this year, I’m not so sure they’ll have the ability to lean into the UAM future and be a dependable partner.
Additional Tiers: The second tier of eVTOL developers are the enticing companies that have yet to meet a sufficient progression across the evaluation criteria - this includes Lilium, OverAir, Jaunt, Vertical Aerospace, Pipistrel, Beta, Hyundai, and EmbraerX Eve. These are solid companies which still have gaps across the criteria that inhibit them. In the future, I plan on going through each of these to clearly articulate the gaps that exist, as well as the strengths that position them to evolve into additional leaders. I know many of the engineers across these companies - and I don’t take lightly indicating that they haven’t yet achieved a status to compete in the top tier. I’m very hopeful that each of these has the potential to very quickly and successfully meet the evaluation criteria.
The final two tiers are those that don’t make sense to me, or those that haven’t shared enough information to be evaluated. I won’t identify the ones that don't make sense to me until future posts when I can fully explain the deficiencies in their concepts/development programs. I wish these efforts well, but I know from my experience analyzing eVTOL configurations and simulating UAM networks that their concepts are going to have a very challenging time developing a competitive product. This won’t be a surprise to any of them as I’ve met with each company and gone through the reasons why their efforts aren’t aligned to successful UAM products.
My hope is that as an industry we can hone these criteria together to develop more intelligent ways of discussing these companies, and help to encourage rational investment that avoids exuberant wasteful endeavors. There’s a limited amount of resources that will be applied to the UAM industry, and together we can help guide it to be as effective and successful as possible.
来源：Linkedin 发布人：Mark Moore
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