Inside the world’s first airport for drones and flying cars
Plans to build the world’s first off-grid transport hub for drones and air-taxis have just received government funding. The Urban Air Port, located in Coventry, will offer flying electric vehicles a place to charge and load up. The project aims to lay the groundwork for a web of transport hubs that could provide a green, clean remedy to our cities’ groaning infrastructure.
Daniel Bennett talks to Ricky Sandhu, the founder and CEO of Urban Air Port, to see if the idea could take off.
WHY DO WE NEED URBAN AIR PORTS?
As an architect and partner at Foster + Partners [an architectural firm], I spent a lot of time developing cutting-edge, innovative buildings and city masterplans, but I never had the scope to tackle the bigger issues involving the bits between the buildings – in other words, our mobility network.
When I first started working on this, my commute was just six miles across London, but it was polluted, congested and took over an hour. So I was just driven by passion and a sense of responsibility that we ought to be developing smarter, cleaner and greener ways to move around our cities.
The urban air-mobility piece came about when Airbus started their air-mobility programme around three years ago. They came to us and said that they knew how to build aircraft, but they didn’t understand cities. They were building a new aircraft that would be small, electric and used for short trips – and they wanted to understand what infrastructure could support something like this.
From there, I built a thesis for what this infrastructure could be, and how it would support the different spaces we live in, from super urban cores like Canary Wharf to our countryside. This work led me to realise that this kind of infrastructure will be massive – and hasn’t been talked about or invested in enough. And that led to the creation of Urban Air Port Ltd.
WHY NOT LAND-BASED TAXIS AND DELIVERIES?
There’s a mass migration happening towards cities and we’re all switching to shopping online. There’s now a delivery van on the kerb of every street, clogging up our roads. This ultimately exacerbates the problems cities already have. Congestion is getting worse and so is air quality. If we can organise another system whereby there are coordinated locations – like the Amazon Lockers that already exist – that an Urban Air Port will help service with a network of drones, it might go some way to remedying the influx of lorries and vans coming into our cities.
I think this idea for flying cargo could eventually be completely transferable to flying humans. If we can get from A to B quicker, and on zero emissions, then surely that’s advantageous.
WILL IT BE A TOTALLY GREEN ENTERPRISE?
The first installation in Coventry will be 100 per cent off-grid. It’s going to be powered by a hydrogen generator, which is clean. There are no emissions. Of course, there’s some carbon intensity involved, depending on the type of hydrogen used and how it’s produced. Our aspiration is to get hydrogen from zero-emission sources.
There’ll be solar panels too. This isn’t just about being clean – it’s important that we try and protect our national grid. The adoption of electric cars is going to be an onslaught, so we don’t want to add to that. In this first location, there’s no access to power. And in future as we grow, there’ll be lots of locations around cities that might be suitable for Urban Air Ports where there might not be a big enough supply of energy.
WHY COVENTRY? AND WHY DID YOU PICK THE UK FOR THE PILOT SCHEME?
From a logistics point of view, Coventry is in the centre of 'ngland. It’s four hours away from all major cities. That’s why Amazon has one of its largest fulfilment centres there. There’s great