Otto Aviation: the future of air taxis

[starcaptain]

Recently there's been some press about a new company that's building ultra-efficient small aircraft, called Otto Aviation. Their prototype, the Celera 500L, portends to be a vision of commercial aviation to come.

The Celera is not very unusual from a strictly technical configuration: lightweight monocoque single engine prop aircraft for 6 passengers and one pilot. However it's the details that really make it a weird and forward-thinking design,  and business case. 

The composite egg/torpedo shaped circular fuselage and thin trailing empenage are designed to take advantage of laminar flow, keeping the whole form as aerodynamic as possible. This thing is ultra fuel efficient and fast, capable of top speeds of 460mph(!) (740kph) and a range of 4500 nautical miles (8300km)[1]. Because it can go so far and consumes fuel so efficiently (allegedly better than 20 miles per gallon, or 11.7L per 100km) it has significantly reduced operating costs compared to equivalently capable aircraft.

Obviously this would have a market for people who use business jets and care about their bottom line. But Otto has their sights on a much bigger opportunity,  created in part by the disruption of Covid: demand for smaller aircraft, making more frequent and less common trips over medium ranges or less. The aircraft itself is more like a taxi or van than the traditional bus- or train- scaled big commercial jets with hub-and-spoke network models. With a small size, they are able to service more airports. Otto is already looking at mini cargo services, electric and hybrid engines, and even drone versions. 

I personally think this is a fantastic idea,  increasing the versatility of aviation as transport,  while also making it quieter, less manufacturing-intensive, and greener. I look forward to seeing how they develop, and hope other companies copy some of their ideas. 

And of course I'm going to try and model the plane in KSP.

[1] Otto Aviation "Celera 500L", https://www.ottoaviation.com/celera-500l retrieved 2020-12-12

[Spica]

While I can believe the range numbers stated by Otto aviation are possible, I doubt they will ever be relied on in practice.

Long natural laminar flow runs are really quite delicate. Raindrops, icing, or even a few bugs smashed onto the forward fuselage or wing leading edges could trip the boundary layer, negating any benefits NLF would get you over a large region downstream of the "disturbance".

Other than that, I sure hope there's a toilet on board for longer flights, if the maximum possible range is ever used.

 

Edited December 13, 2020 by Spica
phrasing

[Piscator]

Would it in fact be greener, though? According to the numbers I could find, the fuel efficiency per passenger seems to be roughly the same as that of a Boeing 747 (12l per 100km for 6 passengers vs. 12l per 1km for ~ 600 passengers).

[mikegarrison]

1 hour ago, Piscator said:

Would it in fact be greener, though? According to the numbers I could find, the fuel efficiency per passenger seems to be roughly the same as that of a Boeing 747 (12l per 100km for 6 passengers vs. 12l per 1km for ~ 600 passengers).

Commercial airplanes are mass transit, and their efficiency per passenger tends to reflect that.

You will hear all sorts of numbers about CO2 from planes, but you have to be careful about where they actually come from. Most of the "carbon calculators" assign a multiplier to airplane CO₂ of 2x-4x as much as they actually produce, supposedly to account for non-CO₂ climate effects. (Effects that they ignore for other modes of transport.)

If you are looking for a carbon calculator for flights with a solid methodology, I suggest the ICAO carbon calculator. It was originally developed so that UN employees could calculate the CO₂ from their flights. It does not include a multiplier for non-CO₂ effects, but of course if you want to add on your own, that's easy enough to do.

https://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/Carbonoffset/Pages/default.aspx

Edited December 13, 2020 by mikegarrison

[wumpus]

On 12/13/2020 at 2:49 AM, Piscator said:

Would it in fact be greener, though? According to the numbers I could find, the fuel efficiency per passenger seems to be roughly the same as that of a Boeing 747 (12l per 100km for 6 passengers vs. 12l per 1km for ~ 600 passengers).

Mostly it would depend on how full the plane is.  And I find it hard to imagine that this thing would displace large jets for any flight you wouldn't want to drive.  Displacing longer car trips is possible.