Mark Moore, the CEO of AAM startup Whisper Aero and co-founder of Uber Elevate, has released a list ranking the viability of different companies seeking to develop and certify electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles.
While the list shares some of the top names in common with comparable rankings from SMG Consulting and Aviation Week, there are also some notable differences.
Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation were the first and second-highest scoring OEMs on Moore’s list, respectively, in line with the two aforementioned rankings. But in a notable departure from those lists, Moore ranks Boeing-backed Wisk Aero as his third top choice, compared to seventh- and tenth-highest for SMG Consulting and Aviation Week, respectively.
Explaining his choice on a recent Aviation Week webinar, Moore said that areas in which he faults Wisk largely center around the company’s decision to “go all in” on autonomous vehicles, which he predicts will make for a more challenging regulatory hurdle compared to piloted aircraft.
“I’m positive it’s going to take until 2030 or beyond to be flying people over cities autonomously,” Moore says.
But working in Wisk’s favor would be the relative ease with which it could potentially pivot to manually piloted operations, which Moore said could happen in a “split-second” if the company chose to. He also said that such a move would likely help attract manufacturing partners who may be hesitant to team up with an autonomous platform like Wisk.
“Wisk has a really good aircraft, great tech, a great team and they can spool up manufacturing,” Moore says. “If they simply choose to put a pilot in control of their aircraft—which probably wouldn’t be too difficult—then all of a sudden they’ve unlocked a huge market potential.”
Another key difference in Moore’s list was the relatively low placement of Volocopter (7) and EHang (14), both of which rank among the top four in the SMG and Aviation Week lists. Moore attributed his lower evaluation of the two companies to his general skepticism about the commercial viability of multicopters compared to winged eVTOLs.
“I think multicopters and non-winged eVTOLs are really poor solutions,” Moore says. “If you’ve got a two-seater and one of those seats is a pilot and you’re flying a multicopter that has a top speed of 40 to 50 miles per hour, there’s just no way you can make money doing that. I’ve analyzed it and their costs are on the order of greater than $10 per passenger mile–and that’s just not going to make money.”
In arriving at his rankings, Moore judged companies across 10 criteria: feasible/competitive eVTOL concept; team talent and experience; sufficient funding; regulatory approvals; supply chain; manufacturing partners; operations partners; market adoption pathways; compelling economics to scale; and noise community acceptance.
His list includes 14 total companies. From first to last, they are: Joby, Archer, Wisk, Vertical Aerospace, Airbus, Beta Technologies, Volocopter, Supernal, Aerofugia, Eve Air Mobility, Lilium, Overair, Autoflight and EHang.
Looking beneath the topline rankings, however, the gap between the two top companies–Joby and Archer–and Wisk, the third highest, is substantial. Joby and Archer received total scores of 12 and 19, respectively, compared to 66 for Wisk. Lower scores on the scale devised by the Whisper CEO indicate a higher overall ranking.
“Joby and Archer are way ahead of everyone else, in my opinion,” Moore says.
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Shame on you, AvWeek for giving him a platform to pontificate.