As the eVTOL industry develops, so does the design of the aircraft. Already, Archer Aviation has left an industry marker with its bold, brave and breathtaking exterior of its Midnight Aircraft. Therefore, should the interior cabin of an eVTOL, the area where passengers may spend a minimum of ten minutes or more on each flight, be elegant and luxurious and reflect a strength of the impending green aviation revolution or, should the seats and interior be as mundane and prosaic as that of a conventional train, airliner or bus?
The potential of the former is reflected by Archer Aviation’s Midnight Aircraft. evtolinsights.com interviewed Julien Montousse back in January, the company’s Vice-President of Design and Innovation, where he explains the philosophy behind the cabin’s creation. For him, it should be closer to a spiritual experience.
Julien Montousse
In the interview he remarks, “Midnight is a commuting plane that is not only practical and comfortable, but also awakens the human spirit. We want our customer to fully embrace the flying experience. We designed the seat to wrap around your body, so you can feel the movement of the craft and become one with the plane. We wished to create privacy for the passenger by designing a partial divider between seats, as well as offering individuality. As you step onboard, we intend to project core flight information into this divider such as your assigned seat, your name, alongside the booked destination point and take-off time. Then there are the large panoramic windows. This was a design priority, so at 2,000 ft the passenger can clearly engage with the city below.”
Immediately, you wonder whether Montousse’s vision is a one-off. Is it practical, humdrum and ordinary enough for the average passenger to embrace? Or is this something the public will desire and expect?
Certainly, in the early days at least, the cost of riding in a flying taxi won’t be cheap. While company’s like Archer hope the ticket price to be similar to an Uber black, this is unlikely until eVTOLs become fully autonomous, and that surely, won’t be for some years, as the passenger psychology must adapt to a concept that such aircraft will fly without pilots, leaving aside all the initial safety issues.
Unfortunately, a flying taxi will be more for the wealthy in the beginning, especially those who regular fly on them, where luxury is to be expected. Who wants to sit in a bus or second class train-type seat surround, when you are paying a lot of money for a ride? Comfort, elegance and style is, surely, the necessity.
More, perhaps, down-to-earth are the seats. Montousse continues, “Materials used in the aerospace industry tend to be traditional. They are not eco-friendly. We need to evolve. So with sustainable electric flight, it is important to integrate materials that are also sustainable. We chose the material of flax fibre for the back of our seats. The plant is highly absorbent of CO2 and requires little irrigation. Leather is the baseline for a premium look and feel in the automotive industry.
“For Archer, the mass property of leather within Midnight’s low weight allowance pushed us to rethink an alternative solution aligned with our brand ethos. We are studying a synthetic leather partially composed from recycled plastic bottles. It has a similar durability to leather and feels great to touch. We describe our cabin as ‘purposeful comfort’.”
This, the environmental-friendly can fully understand and applaud alongside the aim of the eVTOL industry to use improving technologies to dampen the propellor noise in the cabin via the use of advanced sound-proofing materials. Montousse believes the technology will be available to achieve this within five years.
Yet, Archer takes this another step further by what Montousse refers to as “the emotional connection”. He explains, “Until now aerospace is all parametric. In Japan where I lived for 8 years, I learned about the transference of energy. It became evident to me, a craftsperson can pass over human energy through their design. The more a creation comes from a person’s ability and talent rather than a machine, the more possible this is. We consciously put this practice into Midnight’s creation. We have noted this emotional connection with those who have been up close to the Aircraft. They want to touch it, feel it and get close to it. This connection can be a powerful experience.”
When asked about the experience of WW2 Spitfire pilots feeling at one with their aircraft, Montousse’s face lights up. “Yes. We want that connection to happen. Even if the flight is only for 10 minutes, we want passengers to be in the present and love the act of flying. To be fully connected and engaged with Midnight and not feel desensitised in a commodity transport. We want to recreate the 1950s and that golden era of flight, when people loved to fly.”
It is hard to imagine a train passenger on the Brighton to London run or a City bus rider “feeling at one with their transportation”, but, perhaps, this is where eVTOLs will thrive. Not only can they herald an aviation revolution, but create a whole new emotional concept of travel?
Lilium Pioneer Edition Jet Interior on display at EBACE2023
flightglobal.com published a feature this week entitled ‘Are eVTOL cabins the next big opportunity for cabin suppliers?’
The article first refers to Lilium, who recently unveiled its cabin interior for the German-based company’s four seat Pioneer Edition Lilium Jet, at the Geneva-located EBACE2023 Exhibition, to much social media excitement. The company has chosen two suppliers it intends working with for the aircraft’s interior: Diehl Aviation and Paris-based Expliseat.
Diehl, which has also been working with rival eVTOL developer Volocopter on its interior design, is to provide a wide-ranging work package for the Lilium Jet cabin, including providing ceiling and floor panels, walls and partitions, and the luggage compartment. The German interiors’ specialist will also supply the lighting system and air conditioning ducts, the latter manufactured from lightweight composites such as foam granulates.
Expliseat is a new company known for its lightweight airliner seats that replace traditional aluminium with carbonfibre and titanium, and maintains the product it is designing for Lilium will be “one of the first serially produced eVTOL seats”.
Martin Schuebel, Lilium’s Senior Vice-President, says, “Expliseat’s expertise with lightweight and durable materials will help us reach weight and distance targets while ensuring a premium passenger experience”. Expliseat has built a prototype seat that has already “passed several development milestones”, including a crucial crash test.
Another is Wisk Aero, now wholly-owned by Boeing. Director of Product Designer, Uri Tzarnotsky, is interviewed. He explains what happened when members of the public were shown two cabin concepts – one with four seats facing inward, often called campfire or party seating, and the other a conventional two-by-two layout with all passengers facing forward.
Wisk Aero Interior
“In the studio, where we are all co-workers and friends, there was a strong preference for campfire seating. However, when we put four strangers in those mock-ups, as would be the case in a real-world scenario of ride-sharing, we realised how grave a mistake that direction would have been. People were averting their eyes, displaying nervous body language, pulling their feet in tight, and struggling to get comfortable in a cabin with poorly defined boundaries of personal space.”
According to Tzarnotsky, “sanctuary” has been the “overarching theme” in designing the latest Gen 6 version of its eVTOL platform. “We looked at a lot of design languages from modern and high-tech to colourful and friendly in the interest of establishing a welcoming and inclusive environment in the cabin. Sanctuary was ultimately the one that allowed for focus and productivity as well as rest and relaxation.”
Wisk will use certificated helicopter seats, but is working with its unnamed seat vendor to “ensure it aligns with expectations regarding comfort and styling that reinforces our design language”. Passengers will enjoy wi-fi, personal device charging, and air conditioning, with the cabin designed to reach a set point temperature within a minute of the door closing. Additionally, Tzarnotsky says, passengers will be able to control airflow from their personal vent, as they do on an airliner.
Volocity Interior — the Cabin to be Used for Flights over Paris in 2024?
However, one of the trickiest decisions Tzarnotsky and his colleagues had to make was over the windows, and not just because of the trade-off with cost and weight. He said, “Flight at lower altitudes is not something people get to experience very often. We struck a good balance between having large panoramic windows to provide an exceptional field of view, without compromising the sense of safety and security in the cabin.”
Meanwhile, Eve Air Mobility, unveiled a “fifth generation” concept interior for its under-development 100km-range eVTOL aircraft at last year’s Farnborough Airshow. The mock-up revealed a single pilot seat with four passenger seats – two facing forward and two rearward, split by a double armrest. The seats and interior fittings use many natural materials such as cotton and cork.
So, already, we are seeing some common themes amongst the eVTOL developers, although Archer’s Midnight remains ahead of the pack and, perhaps, is more imaginative and left-field than its present rivals. Which then offers up an obvious question. Will this mean the cost to construct each Midnight Aircraft be more than its rivals, where a less unconventional approach reduces the overheads?
Meanwhile, Montousse feels strongly about his personal concept. “I want designers to see eVTOLs as the next frontier of creativity. We have an opportunity of changing the way the public view flying.”
Sadly, as time goes by, and the cost of eVTOL travelling is reduced, presumably, like other new transport industries from the past, conformity becomes the norm amongst those companies who survive. So, make sure you take a ride on Midnight in the early days, enjoy the luxury and elegance, while feeling at one with the aircraft, before eVTOL interiors become similar to the 8.45 am passenger train leaving Brighton for London.
