🐋 It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a... whale?
Urban Tech & Our Future In the Skies
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I've been on an urban tech kick this week. It's a relatively new category in tech essentially made up of several older categories. In essence, it encompasses any tech that has an impact on our cities, ranging from IoT & data collection to transportation & logistics to construction & architecture. Most visible, is the omnipresent micromobility trend: scooters. But there's a whole world to unpack just beneath. Today I want to give a quick overview of the sector but then focus in on two areas, solely based on the fact that they're frickin’ cool !
Peter Thiel was wrong
Granted, it's a rare occasion, but I can think of two instances off-hand where history is clearly not on his side.
His MAGA moment (seen below in what can only be described as a weird hand-holding ceremony with then candidate Donald Trump)
His oft-recited quote lamenting the disappointing results of late American ingenuity: “we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”
It should be obvious that today I'm more concerned with the 2nd mistake (despite his weird, neo-libertarian bromance with a would-be authoritarian). So what was his point? We shovelled money into social media apps and digital solutions at the expense of hard engineering and innovation that would have resulted in a Jetson's like future. It's the classic atoms versus bits debate. Bits won out in the early days of the internet, but atoms are coming back with a vengeance. We've reached a point in history where technology and crisis (climate, duh) are joining forces to bring digital-physical solutions to the forefront.
I'm here to tell you that we are going to get Peter Thiel his flying cars. And so much more…
The “Urban Tech” Category in a Few Charts
Fortunately, this isn't like the Grammy's — Urban tech really does mean Urban (i.e. not a dogwhistle for Hip/Hop+ R&B). The driving force behind this innovation is timing.
"By 2050, the world's population is expected to be 9.8B. Nearly 70% of this booming population – 6.7B people – are expected to live in urban areas."
– National Geographic, Cities of the Future
In short, our population is growing and city density is increasing: more people in a more concentrated area (and you thought it was already too crowded !). Furthermore, climate change is exacerbating the endemic risk associated with living, well, anywhere on planet Earth. To avoid humanitarian crises, prevent further damage to the environment and support an increasingly urbanized civilization, we need Urban Tech. Here are some charts to give you the state of play:
💰 Big Market Opportunity
😳 The Urban Tech Stack is Quite Varied
📈 Existing (& Growing) Investor Base
🏙 Cities are The Problem & The Solution
🛴 🌱 Fastest Growing Segments are Urban Mobility & Clean Energy
🇫🇷 High Density of Projects in France (Urban Air Mobility)
In previous articles, I've covered concepts like The 15-Minute City and France's Aerospace Valley — the former covers urban mobility, advanced engineering and innovation in transportation, the latter is a reflection on space travel, habitation and the powerhouse industrial firms underpinning the missions. Today, brings together a bit of both: aerodynamics within the city limits! Formally, it's called Urban Air Mobility and represents a sub-sector of the Urban Tech → Mobility space. The most exciting efforts within UAM (IMHO) are EVTOLs (Tech loves a good acronym): Electric Vertical Take-Off & Landing.
Unsurprisingly, in France, a big chunk of the work is being spearheaded in Aerospace Valley with many of the large, legacy engineering firms financing and advising from the shadows (or in some cases very publicly to demonstrate their commitment to innovation). Movement towards buy-in from the legacy players reminds me a bit of the pattern with electric vehicles and self-driving: if you can't beat ‘em, join ‘em. At first, there was lots of resistance, but when the tide of public sentiment turns, you have to get on board to survive. In the wake of Tesla (and others), every major car company has an electric vehicle on the market or in the works and is actively pursuing a software strategy (through acquisition, partnerships or incubator programs). This too, I imagine, will happen with Urban Air Mobility — a trickle until the dam breaks and we're all zipping around above the skyscrapers.
🐋 Riches in Niches
More interesting to me is the fact that this category is already starting to develop niches. From intra-city travel to short-medium distance flights to long-distance logistics and shipment vehicles are carving out their positions in the market. Ascendance Flight Technologies is perhaps the most visible in France, offering the promise of cleaner aviation. The drone-like features have a striking resemblance to Snapchat's Pixy, a new autonomous flying camera/drone for creators.
Commercial flight and commuting infrastructure is, however, quite relatable. All of us can imagine (and probably currently fantasize about) hopping on an unmanned electric chopper to get from one side of the city to another in a matter of minutes. But the real environmental culprit — resulting from our same-day delivery addiction — is shipping and logistics. How do we get inventory from one location to another with a low carbon footprint? This is one of the several problems Flying Whales is attempting to solve. The modern zeppelin company is reinventing old technology to build solutions unique to present day.
If we're being honest, Zeppelins come to mind in three cases:
Old timey video footage 📽
The Goodyear Blimp over a Football stadium 🏟
The Hindenburg 🔥
Which is precisely why I'm obsessed with this alternative approach. What is generally considered a defunct technology now has a new purpose — and ideally, with modern engineering and sensors, we can put in place security protocols to ensure large scale disaster is avoided. As I mentioned, basic shipping and logistics isn't the only application here, the team at Flying Whales aims to offer applications in construction, heavy industry, lumber, energy sectors and even disaster relief in remote areas. So while it may bring that Amazon Prime shipment across the country, it's more likely to be delivering rescue supplies to a region upended by a hurricane.
🚕 Flying Taxis Coming 2024
It's quite early in the space. Flying Whales doesn't anticipate being commercially viable until 2026. But the reality is that this decade will be one of great transformation for cities, transportation and logistics. The convergence of technological progress and existential urgency is pushing us towards a future we could only dream of 50 years ago. If you’re excited to jump in an EVTOL the day it's publicly available, I highly recommend listening to the latest from Azeem Azhar's Exponential View. Volocopter (a 🇩🇪 German EVTOL company) is working to build the next generation transportation ecosystem with a promise to launch in Paris in time for the 2024 Summer Olympics. Volocopter > Uber any day.
I hope you see you in the skies! ✌🏼
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