The Dream of Urban Air Mobility

Welcome to Shephard Studio’s Revolutions in Vertical Flight, brought to you in partnership with Bell.

The Revolutions in Vertical Flight podcast tells the little-known story of the history of rotorcraft, from the autogiro and helicopter, to the tiltrotor and eVTOL platforms in development today. 

Revolutions in Vertical Flight reveals the stories of a small group of pioneers, the visions and beliefs that drove them, and their approach to invention and innovation.

And the Shephard Studio podcast series looks at the vertical flight innovation underway today, revealing how it will transform military operations and revolutionise urban mobility.

In this episode, we learn about the revolution underway in urban transportation, one that will have an impact on the same scale as when the internal combustion engine took over from the horse-drawn carriage.

Industry giants and start-ups alike are racing to develop electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft.

Better known as EvTOLs, these platforms could turn the visions of science fiction into reality, providing low-carbon travel in the urban environment, without the need for runways or the other infrastructure associated with earlier types of aviation.

Innovations like the Bell Nexus, CityAirbus and UberAir are deep in development, with companies expecting significant advances over the course of the next decade. 

We hear how passengers could one day hail an air taxi through a smartphone app, transporting them from one building to another within or between cities, without facing the traffic of urban streets.