Vertistations for Advanced Air Mobility and Mobility as a Service

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Vertistations will support the Advanced Air Mobility industry which Morgan Stanley states is a $1 trillion opportunity. Deloitte described vertistations in a future of mobility paper. SkyStations was an MBA capstone project based around vertistations adapted from a convenience store, with the addition of electric vehicle chargers and elevated vertiports. Convenience stores offer excellent real estate to be used for Advanced Air Mobility around global metropolitan areas. Many convenience stores are located along highways for easy access. Travel plazas and truck stops could also be converted to vertistations.

A vertistation is an electric mobility hub with fast kW and MW electric vehicle chargers for autonomous and electric cars, trucks, semis, RVs, motorcycles, delivery vans, drones, and electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft aka flying cars or air taxis. Joby has demonstrated 65dBa sound level for their eVTOL aircraft. The surrounding highway or roadway noise is louder. A small boarding gate, stairs, elevator, and bridge were added to the side of an existing convenience store, based on an existing location in Houston, TX. Texas DOT has an Urban Air Mobility Committee. Load bearing elevated vertiports replaced the fuel island canopy. This has been demonstrated at a California truck stop with load bearing canopy and an MD-500 helicopter. The vertiports are surrounded by downwash mitigation and energy recapture wind turbine system. Single person eVTOL aircraft such as Hexa from Lift Aircraft can transport passengers from home to the vertistation and transfer to a larger air taxi. The vertistation has MWh battery storage on site, and the MW chargers charge the eVTOL aircraft, vans, heavy duty trucks, and allow for on-route charging of electric transit buses. Ride sharing companies can quickly and easily drop off and pick-up air taxi passengers, who travel 100 steps or less from air taxi to ground ride share taxi. Package delivery companies can load packages into the numerous cargo delivery cubes (yellow, brown, white, blue) and launch autonomous air and ground delivery drones for neighborhood deliveries. The delivery drivers can grab a quick bite to eat while the electric delivery van is charging. NASA and the FAA are working on vertiport concept of operations and automated air traffic management and vertiport systems through the AAM National Campaign testing. Other global Civil Aviation Authorities have ongoing AAM work. Emergency response drones can launch from a red drone cube to deliver AEDs or have eyes in the sky. Ambulances can load stretchers into the elevator for emergency response helicopters or eVTOL aircraft. The elevator also allows pallet sized cargo to be loaded and unloaded from eVTOL to ground delivery vans.

SkyStations provided a solution to the last mile transit problem by keeping the last mile to home the shortest to allow air taxis to provide commuting time benefits. Vertistations also provides technical and financial solutions to the business case of increasing electric vehicle charger usage and battery energy storage with additional virtual power plant revenue.

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  • ABOUT THE ENTRANT

  • Name:
    Daniel Declutemelancon
  • Type of entry:
    individual
  • Patent status:
    none