[House Hearing, 115 Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] URBAN AIR MOBILITY_ARE FLYING CARS READY FOR TAKE-OFF? ======================================================================= HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION __________ JULY 24, 2018 __________ Serial No. 115-71 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov __________ U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 30-881 PDF WASHINGTON : 2019 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office, http://bookstore.gpo.gov. For more information, contact the GPO Customer Contact Center, U.S. Government Publishing Office. Phone 202-512-1800, or 866-512-1800 (toll-free). E-mail, [email protected]. COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas DANA ROHRABACHER, California ZOE LOFGREN, California MO BROOKS, Alabama DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon BILL POSEY, Florida AMI BERA, California THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut RANDY K. WEBER, Texas MARC A. VEASEY, Texas STEPHEN KNIGHT, California DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia BRIAN BABIN, Texas JACKY ROSEN, Nevada BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia JERRY McNERNEY, California RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado GARY PALMER, Alabama PAUL TONKO, New York DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida BILL FOSTER, Illinois ANDY BIGGS, Arizona MARK TAKANO, California ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii NEAL P. DUNN, Florida CHARLIE CRIST, Florida CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina DEBBIE LESKO, Arizona MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas C O N T E N T S July 24, 2018 Page Witness List..................................................... 2 Hearing Charter.................................................. 3 Opening Statements Statement by Representative Lamar Smith, Chairman, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.. 4 Written Statement............................................ 7 Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives............................................. 9 Written Statement............................................ 11 Witnesses: Dr. Jaiwon Shin, Associate Administrator, Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, NASA Oral Statement............................................... 14 Written Statement............................................ 16 Dr. John-Paul Clarke, College of Engineering Dean's Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology; Co-chair, 2014 National Research Council Committee on Autonomy Research for Civil Aviation Oral Statement............................................... 25 Written Statement............................................ 27 Dr. Eric Allison, Head of Aviation Programs, Uber Oral Statement............................................... 34 Written Statement............................................ 51 Mr. Michael Thacker, Executive Vice President, Technology and Innovation, Bell Oral Statement............................................... 54 Written Statement............................................ 56 Ms. Anna Mracek Dietrich, Co-Founder and Regulatory Affairs, Terrafugia Oral Statement............................................... 67 Written Statement............................................ 69 Discussion....................................................... 85 Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions Dr. Jaiwon Shin, Associate Administrator, Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, NASA...................................... 110 Dr. John-Paul Clarke, College of Engineering Dean's Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology; Co-chair, 2014 National Research Council Committee on Autonomy Research for Civil Aviation....................................................... 126 Dr. Eric Allison, Head of Aviation Programs, Uber................ 136 Mr. Michael Thacker, Executive Vice President, Technology and Innovation, Bell............................................... 143 Ms. Anna Mracek Dietrich, Co-Founder and Regulatory Affairs, Terrafugia..................................................... 150 URBAN AIR MOBILITY--ARE FLYING CARS READY FOR TAKE-OFF? ---------- TUESDAY, JULY 24, 2018 House of Representatives, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Washington, D.C. The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lamar Smith [Chairman of the Committee] presiding. [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Chairman Smith. The Committee on Space, Science, and Technology will come to order. Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recesses of the Committee at any time. Good morning, and welcome to today's hearing titled ``Urban Air Mobility--Are Flying Cars Ready for Take-Off?'' I'll recognize myself for five minutes for an opening statement, but before beginning, let me just say that we expect some Members to arrive shortly. There are both Republican and Democratic Caucus meetings going on, and as soon as those caucuses are over, I think that we'll have more Members, although this is a critical mass up here right now. I also note the good audience interest. Nice to have everybody here and with our discussion about such a fascinating subject. And we welcome our five witnesses as well, and I'll introduce you in just a minute. For decades, flying cars have been the object of our imagination. They represent aspiration, innovation, and freedom of exploration. The entertainment industry has popularized the concept in everything from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to The Jetsons, from Star Wars to Back to the Future. Let me confess to a couple of things this morning. Several weeks ago, I was taking a walk at the Mall, and I noticed a mother with a young son off to the side. It looked like to me the young son was operating a remote-controlled car, and suddenly, wings sprouted from the side of the car and the car took off. This was the first remote-controlled flying car that I've ever seen in my life. But you have to understand that I've been collecting articles about flying cars since I was in elementary school, so I was just absolutely intrigued by what I saw. I have to say I immediately sent off for one. I flew it in Lincoln Park several weeks ago, and it worked wonderfully. The advantage of this particular remote-controlled car--flying-car plane--is that it flies so slowly you can sort of you can't do much about vertical, but that's okay. It goes so slowly, it doesn't seem to matter. I also liked it so much that I want to tell Members that I ordered a number of these flying cars. I know a good thing when I see it. Every Member who comes to today's hearing is going to get a flying car, and I am going to show it. This is what the box looks like, and, more specifically, this is what the car looks like when the wings have popped out. This can take off in 15 feet. I could've taken it off on the witness table, but I decided not to because I don't think I could have made the turn before it hit the wall. And I know what everybody would have said if that had happened. So, in any case, as far as the Members go, we'll be delivering a box to your office sometime today or tomorrow. And I've also promised these flying car models to all the witnesses today, we'll just have to figure out how you get it back if you're not from the DC. area, but we'll figure that out. By the way, it's always been frustrating to me to be given a present that required batteries and then no batteries, so I have purchased batteries. Will get, taped on top of the model, six AA batteries so that you'll be able to use this car fairly shortly. Anyway, it will be great fun, and I think you'll enjoy it. By the way, if you want to, be sure and let me know how you did, and if you can do, take a video. Who knows, we may have a video hearing sometime soon. So, anyway, when the word gets out, I suspect we'll have a few more Members come as well. They do have to stay for more than one minute, however. Let's see. Oh, I want to show you examples of some of these clippings. These are more recent clippings, but the most recent clipping was actually--I'm on a plane Friday night flying back home, and I'm reading The Economist, and in The Economist this week there is an article on flying cars. It's called a ``James Bond special,'' which happens to hit two of my personal interests, both James Bond and the flying cars, but it was in this week's Economist. Then, we have a Terrafugia witness today, and I went back and I have a clipping from 2010 on the plane that I think you're going to be selling next year. And I was not around at the time, so I don't want any comments, but back in 1945, do you recall the store JCPenney? Okay. This is an ad by JCPenney in 1945, ``buy your plane at Penney's.'' But anyway, it looked like every family was going to own an airplane back then. Obviously, it didn't happen, but that's the kind of aspiration we've had in the United States for--about this subject for a long, long time. So anyway, you can look at my clips whenever you want to. Let's see. Our focus today is on urban air mobility, a concept that can include delivery drones and personal air vehicles, as well as cars that can both be driven and flown. And advances in lithium-ion battery technology, computing power, and electric propulsion are providing companies with the tools they need to turn science fiction into science fact. This is the first Congressional hearing dedicated to the topic of flying cars. One company, Terrafugia, says that their vehicle could be available as soon as next year. It's called the Transition and can drive like a car, fit into a standard garage, and be flown in and out of over 5,000 local airports. And Uber has a bold timeline to make an air-based on-demand transportation system available to the public in five years. Companies like Bell are working to design and build the vehicles that will operate on the network envisioned by Uber. Autonomous cars, which are impressive and already have been the subject of Science Committee hearings, don't have the same benefits as urban air mobility. Traffic and gridlock challenges are better overcome by cars that fly rather than drive. Flying cars also have the benefit of enabling emergency vehicles to reach their destinations faster and provide more mobility options for those who cannot operate a car. Although it will be a while before we see widespread ownership and use of personal vehicles that can both be driven and flown, these advances are visible on the horizon. As policymakers, we can examine how we can support such technological advances while pursuing a safe, reliable, and efficient regulatory framework. It occurs to me that we're the first committee in Congress to have a hearing on flying cars, but remember, we were also the first committee to have a hearing on drones and several other subjects as well, so that's one of the things that we are about in the Science Committee, the future and innovation. We thank our witnesses for being here today, and I look forward to the day when I can fly a flying car. [The prepared statement of Chairman Smith follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Chairman Smith. I'll now recognize the Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson, the gentlewoman from Texas, for her opening statement. Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much. Good morning, and let me welcome our witnesses. And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this hearing to examine urban air mobility research and development efforts and the potential benefits and challenges that might accrue from this exciting new technology. I might say that in the next five years if you'll come to Dallas I will make sure that you get a ride in reality. Stuck in a traffic jam, who among us has never dreamed of riding a flying car and coming out of that traffic and going-- leaping ahead of everybody? Well, it might be on the way. What some of us could only dream of after watching episodes of The Jetsons might actually happen sooner than we think. Indeed, we will hear today many companies believe that we are in the threshold of revolutionary changes brought about by a new generation of vehicles. A multitude of concepts for vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, many of them fueled by recent advances in lightweight electric propulsion and storage capacity, are being proposed with the goal of providing convenient urban transportation. Washington, you know, can really use this, too, especially where I have to go and come from home. If proven to be safe, such concepts could result in changing the way goods are delivered and people move around. In turn, the innovation generated by UAM may result not only in creating new jobs but also enhancing the productivity of workers in existing jobs. But as with any new technology, there are challenges to its implementation. This calls for thoughtful examination. A panel established by the National Academies found in 2014 that, increasingly, autonomous aircraft pose serious questions about how they will be safely and efficiently integrated into the existing civil aviation structure. As defined by the panel, a fully autonomous aircraft would not require a pilot. The aircraft would be able to operate independently within civil airspace, interacting with air- traffic controllers and other pilots, just as if a human pilot were on board and in command. In addition to technological barriers such as accurately predicting the behavior of systems that can adapt to changing conditions, a feature critical in autonomous aircraft, widespread operation of UAS systems will also require resolution of applicable regulatory and certification requirements. Regulations are needed to ensure that vehicles can operate in airspace above cities without negatively impacting safety. In addition, certification and safety requirements for these type of vehicles would need to be developed. Finally, a major challenge will be integrating UAM operations into the national airspace. In that regard, we are fortunate that we can leverage NASA's work on the unmanned aircraft system, or the UAS, traffic management to get a head start examining the issue. Mr. Chairman, I look forward to the--hearing from our witnesses on the benefits and challenges associated with UAM operations and on the role research can play in enhancing the safety of future UAM operations. And I yield back. [The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. Let me introduce our experts today. And our first witness is Dr. Jaiwon Shin, Associate Administrator of the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate at NASA. In this role, Dr. Shin manages the agency's aeronautics research portfolio and guides its strategic direction, including research in advanced air vehicle concepts, airspace operations, safety integrated aviation systems and the development of aviation concepts. Prior to working at NASA headquarters, Dr. Shin served as Chief of the Aeronautics Projects Office at NASA's Glenn Research Center, where he managed all of the Center's aeronautics projects. Dr. Shin received a bachelor's degree from Yonsei University in Korea, a master's degree in mechanical engineering from California State University, and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech University. Our second witness is Dr. John-Paul Clarke, the College of Engineering Dean's Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Co-Chair of the 2014 National Research Council Committee on Autonomy Research for Civil Aviation. Dr. Clarke's main areas of research include aircraft trajectory prediction and optimization, especially as it pertains to the development of flight procedures that reduce the environmental impact of aviation. Dr. Clarke received his Bachelor of Science, Master of Science, and Doctorate of Science degrees from MIT. Apparently, you like Cambridge. Our third witness today is Dr. Eric Allison, Head of Aviation Programs at Uber. Prior to Uber, Dr. Allison served as CEO of Zee Aero, where he led the development of the Cora vehicle, a two-place, self-piloted air taxi. Dr. Allison received a Bachelor of Arts in mechanical engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering. He also earned a Master of Science and Ph.D. from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. Our fourth witness is Mr. Michael Thacker, Executive Vice President of Technology and Innovation at Bell. In this role, Mr. Thacker is responsible for leading Bell's engineering team and providing strategic direction for designing, developing, and integrating technologies. Prior to Bell, Mr. Thacker served as a Senior Vice President of Engineering at Textron Aviation. Mr. Thacker holds a bachelor of science in aerospace engineering and a Master of Science from Kansas University. He also holds an MBA degree from Duke University. Our final witness is Ms. Anna Mracek Dietrich, Co-Founder and Regulatory Affairs at Terrafugia. She leads Terrafugia's U.S. regulatory policy engagement. Prior to founding Terrafugia, Ms. Dietrich worked to advance pioneering strategies and product development at GE Aviation and Boeing Phantom Works. As a recognized leader in aviation and innovation, she was named one of Boston's top 15 innovators by the Boston Globe. Ms. Dietrich earned bachelor and Master of Science degrees in aerospace engineering from MIT, and also holds a private pilot license. We welcome you all, and look forward to your testimony. Dr. Shin, if you'll begin. TESTIMONY OF DR. JAIWON SHIN, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR, AERONAUTICS RESEARCH MISSION DIRECTORATE, NASA Dr. Shin. Chairman Smith, thanks so much for that great opening. Ranking Member Johnson and Members of the Committee, thank you for this opportunity to testify on NASA's aeronautics research program and the R&D challenges related to urban air mobility, or UAM. NASA's aeronautics is globally recognized as the DNA of the aviation system. For over 100 years, we have been conducting world-class research to enable safer, more efficient, and more environmentally friendly air transportation systems. We work through collaborative partnerships with the U.S. aviation industry, other government agencies, and academia to ensure our technologies quickly transition for application. As the introduction of the jet engine revolutionized aviation in the last century, UAM promises another revolution in this century. This new capability could completely transform the urban landscape and change our lifestyle. Urban air mobility is not a new idea, but in the past, the technologies were not available to meet the safety and economic requirements. So what's different now? First, the enabling technologies are within our grasp such as an ability to manage massive data sets; electric power and propulsion systems for quiet, sustainable, and more affordable vehicles; miniaturization and fusion of sensors in vehicle and operational system autonomy. Second, by the middle of the century, 70 percent of the world population will live in urban areas. Mobility within these cities will require different solutions. Finally, there is a change in consumer expectations. Across society, we are bringing technology to end-users on demand and at their fingertips. Now, technology can enable the same on- demand experience in aviation. But this new market won't emerge overnight. UAM will start with a mix of onboard-piloted and remotely piloted vehicles and progress toward autonomous operations. Markets will develop incrementally with initial markets driven by the need to have a solid safety case. Along the way, many challenges will need to be solved. NASA focuses on the critical technical challenges where no one company can go alone. And NASA is already contributing. We have recently made history by flying our Ikhana UAS without a chase aircraft utilizing the standards that we developed and validated. We innovated the UAS traffic management or UTM concept for smaller UAS to operate at low altitude in uncontrolled airspace. Today, UAM is accepted concept around the world. Through our general aviation size X-57 distributed electric propulsion demonstrator, we are helping to develop and validate standards and means of certifying electric propulsion components and systems. But UAM presents many more challenges in technical regulatory policy and infrastructure areas. Prevailing UAM vehicle concepts employ vertical takeoff and landing designs that utilize distributed electric propulsion systems and highly automated guidance and control systems. Assuring the safety of these vehicles for operation in densely populated urban areas will be a major challenge. To enable UAM operations of distributed highly automated service provider-based system with robust data-sharing is needed, which is precisely what NASA is developing today with UTM. We will extend the UTM concept to meet the even more challenging UAM requirements. Communities will not accept UAM operations if the noise level significantly exceeds background noise levels. Meeting those expectations requires technologies to reduce vehicle noise and mitigate noise through operational procedures. NASA is uniquely positioned to make impactful contributions to realizing the UAM vision by providing leadership in identifying the key challenges and conducting necessary R&D to address those challenges. We are actively shifting our focus to work on these challenges, building new partnerships, and leveraging ongoing work to make an impact as soon as possible. UAM is a major economic and transportation opportunity that the United States must lead. NASA will do our best to ensure the United States maintains the global leadership. With the right technology, right business environment, and entrepreneurial spirit to succeed, NASA and the U.S. aviation community will lead the world into a new era of aviation. Thank you again for this opportunity to testify on this critically important topic. I look forward to answering your questions. [The prepared statement of Dr. Shin follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Chairman Smith. Thank you, Dr. Shin. And Dr. Clarke? TESTIMONY OF DR. JOHN-PAUL CLARKE, COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING DEAN'S PROFESSOR, GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; CO-CHAIR, 2014 NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL COMMITTEE ON AUTONOMY RESEARCH FOR CIVIL AVIATION Dr. Clarke. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Johnson, Members of the Committee, thank you for this opportunity to comment on the potential benefits and challenges of urban air mobility. The subject vision for UAM is that of vertical takeoff and landing and in some cases short takeoff and landing vehicles transporting people directly between their origins and their destinations. However, there's also an equally compelling vision of VTOL vehicles, potentially autonomous VTOL vehicles transporting packages and cargo on nonstop segments between their origins and destinations. My sense is that UAM will involve the movement of both people and cargo between origins and destinations and that it's also very likely that they will have to be a dynamic hub-and- spoke network in a similar way to we have airlines where flight segments and the locations of hubs are dynamically generated based on the demand that you see at any given time. With this vision as a basis for analysis, it's evident to me that, first, aircraft will require greater autonomy in operations, and by that I mean be able to operate without human intervention, supervision, and autonomous decision-making, i.e., able to determine what to do next in a situation that was not preprogrammed or predetermined. Second, the two basic aspects of air-traffic management, air-traffic control and traffic flow management, will also require greater autonomy. Third, the proliferation of vertiports will raise noise, privacy, and safety concerns. Fourth, vertiport locations and flight trajectories must be jointly optimized for efficiency, noise, privacy, and safety. Fifth, ATM for UAM will likely be provided by private/ municipal entities, maybe public-private partnerships that are monitored or regulated by the FAA. And sixth, legislation may be needed with respect to certification requirements for vehicles, systems, and operators. The first two issues I've raised relate to autonomy. The third and fourth issues relate to modeling and optimization. The fifth and sixth are public policy issues for which I am not an expert but I am sure many in the room are. Thus, I will confine the remainder of my remarks to the research challenges and objectives for autonomy research and for modeling and optimization research. With regards to autonomy research, in 2014 the NRC report entitled ``Autonomy Research for Civil Aviation: Towards a New Era of Flight,'' my colleagues and I identified eight technical barriers, four regulation and certification barriers, and two legal and social barriers to increased autonomy. We propose the following four most urgent and most difficult research projects: develop methodologies to characterize and bound the behavior of adaptive nondeterminate systems over their complete lifecycle; two, develop the system architectures and techniques that would enable increasingly sophisticated and increasingly autonomous systems and unmanned aircraft to operate for extended periods without real-time human cognizance or control; three, develop the theoretical basis and methodologies for using modeling and simulation to accelerate the development and maturation of advanced increasingly autonomous systems and aircraft; and fourth, develop standards and processes for verification, validation, and certification of increasingly autonomous systems and determine their implications for design. I believe that these research projects remain relevant to the quest for increasing the autonomous vehicles and systems and are just as relevant to the realization of UAM. To my knowledge NASA has started research in each of these four areas. However, progress has been slow and needs to be accelerated. In regards to modeling and optimization research, helicopter noise has been and continues to be a concern in urban areas. I have every reason, given the similarities, to believe that the noise from proposed UAM VTOL will also be a concern in urban areas. Separately, there continues to be concern about safety of helicopters and other rotorcraft, and current understanding of the privacy and safety concerns of the general public is poor. With these considerations in mind, I believe that UAM will be further enabled by investments in the following four research projects: First, develop models for source noise and failure characteristics of a wide range of proposed vehicles in a wide range of operating conditions. Second, develop noise and failure modeling frameworks that can be used in the context of a broader vehicle design tool to develop no-noise, high-reliability vehicles and to aid in certification. Third, develop holistic analytics capabilities for UAM. Fourth, develop high-fidelity computationally efficient algorithms to optimize trajectories and the locations of vehicles. Thank you for inviting me to testify and for having the vision to hold a hearing on this very important topic. I look forward to your questions and to working with you in the future on this topic. [The prepared statement of Dr. Clarke follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Chairman Smith. Thank you, Dr. Clarke. Dr. Allison? TESTIMONY OF DR. ERIC ALLISON, HEAD OF AVIATION PROGRAMS, UBER Dr. Allison. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Johnson, and Members of the Committee, it is a privilege to be here before you today to discuss the role Uber will play in delivering aerial-ride sharing services in the years ahead. My name is Eric Allison, and I'm excited to lead Uber's Elevate initiative. Elevate is building our future Uber air product that aims to allow anyone to push a button and get a flight. To achieve this, we are developing a real-time on-demand network of air vehicles to deliver time savings to riders on a massive scale. We are creating Uber Air because we believe aerial ridesharing has the potential to radically improve urban mobility. Every year, millions of hours are wasted in traffic on roads worldwide. In 2016, the Texas Department of Transportation estimated drivers in five of the State's largest metropolitan areas lose about 52 hours a year due to congestion. And here in the United States we have one of the world's most congested cities, Los Angeles. This is why we have announced Dallas-Fort Worth and Los Angeles as two of our launch markets. For residents of these cities and for the rest of us, moments stuck on the road represent less time with family, fewer hours growing our economies, and more money spent polluting the world. As a multimodal transportation company, Uber believes solving this problem is core to our mission of making transportation safe, reliable, and affordable to everyone everywhere. Just as skyscrapers allowed cities to use limited land more efficiently, urban air transportation will use all three dimensions to alleviate transportation congestion on the ground. We started this journey two years ago by publishing our Elevate white paper, which I respectfully request be entered into the record. Chairman Smith. Without objection, the white paper will be made a part of the record. [The information follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Dr. Allison. Thank you. We wanted to understand why people don't fly in cities today and what barriers must be overcome to make this possible. In addressing these questions we identified an approach to systematically tackle each of the challenges, and in fact, our analysis not only projects aerial ridesharing as feasible but also leads us to chart a path to launch at affordable prices. Once economies of scale are achieved, we could operate at rates cheaper than owning and driving your own car. To achieve this vision, we aim to begin testing vehicles in Texas and California by 2020 and commence certified commercial operations in 2023. During our trial phase, we intend to prove the high safety, constant reliability, and low-noise aspects of our service so we may expand passenger operations once we begin deploying certified aircraft. In both markets our service holds the promise of reducing congestion and improving quality of life. Ultimately, no one company can do this alone. Broad-based partnerships with government and industry are critical to achieve this vision. One of our partners, Bell, is a leading rotorcraft manufacture and is well-positioned to pave the way for safe, reliable, and affordable Uber air taxis. Together with our other vehicle partners--Boeing's Aurora, Embraer, Pipistrel, and Karem Aircraft--we are actively designing new aircraft to lead a revolution in urban aviation in cities around the globe. We're proud to be collaborating with these job-creators to chart the future. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is another important partner. We've signed two Space Act agreements with NASA, one for the development of new UTM concepts and another to explore technologies for urban air mobility. As part of these agreements, we've completed a study on ways our aircraft will safely separate from commercial airliners in Dallas-Fort Worth airport and conducted simulations paving the way for long-term air-traffic management solutions. Additional studies to unlock urban air transportation are ongoing. We ask Congress to encourage NASA to continue investing in this ecosystem, and we look forward to extending our collaborations with NASA and other governmental partners to work on aircraft innovation, noise limitations, and autonomous flight. As a member of the NASA Advisory Council Aeronautics Committee, I'm confident our joint research efforts can and will help open this market and ask each of you to encourage and support NASA to continue investing in this exciting new industry. At Uber we are investing in aerial ridesharing because it has the potential to deliver time savings at affordable prices to consumers around the world. We see exceptional demand across all large markets for safe, reliable, fast transportation services, and our network can be an excellent supplement to public and private transit options across each of them. The converging forces of improving battery technology, massive utilization through rideshare, and the advent of reliable autonomous aviation will be a true gamechanger in how people move around cities across the world. Working with visionary leaders like those at this table, we will bring about lasting positive change. To give you a sense of how users will live this future transportation experience, I would like to close with a short video illustrating Uber Air. I hope you enjoy this projection of the future and look forward to answering your questions about our vision and our approach. Thank you. Please play the video. Chairman Smith. Okay. [Video shown.] Dr. Allison. So in this video you see the integration of our service with the Uber app. The rider requests a ride and then is directed to a sky port where they're able to board an aircraft and be taken to their destination, flying above traffic. And then the vehicle goes away to take the next ride. Thank you very much. [The prepared statement of Mr. Allison follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Chairman Smith. Closer than you think. Thank you, Dr. Allison. Mr. Thacker? TESTIMONY OF MR. MICHAEL THACKER, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION, BELL Mr. Thacker. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Johnson, Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to testify this morning on the subject of urban air mobility. My name is Michael Thacker, and I am Executive Vice President of Technology and Innovation at Bell. Made up of 7,200 employees, Bell is based in Fort Worth, Texas. My written testimony has been submitted for the record, but I appreciate the opportunity to highlight a few key elements for the consideration of the Committee. To help set the stage, I would also like to start by sharing a video. [Video shown.] Mr. Thacker. At Bell, we have a legacy of leading innovation in aviation, as I mentioned, from the first American jet fighter to the first tiltrotor. Today, we are carrying that forward by creating new opportunities in urban air transportation with electric and hybrid vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. Much work remains to be done by Bell and our partners and government agencies to operationalize on-demand mobility in the vertical dimension and bring the benefits of aviation to our communities in a way that is safe, quiet, convenient, and affordable. Work is progressing on many fronts with our partners, including private entities like Uber and public agencies like the FAA and NASA. At Bell, we are using four integrated frameworks to help define the urban air mobility model: operational, regulatory, manufacturing, and technology. The operational framework allows us to define the necessary requirements for urban on-demand mobility. These include operational infrastructure, safety and acoustic considerations, and the critical need for a solution that is affordable for most people. The operational framework also includes local community engagement. Bell's top priority within the regulatory framework is working with the FAA and other regulatory stakeholders to establish an integrated approach across vehicle, operational, and air-traffic requirements. We firmly believe that current aviation safety expectations should be met and even exceeded, but new vehicles and operational models may mitigate risks in new ways. The recent modification to the certification requirements for small aircraft known as part 23, amendment 64, and its performance-based approach provides a reasonable starting point for certifying these new aircraft. We would like to see a similar performance-based approach to the integrated safety system requirements for the vehicle operations and airspace together. A holistic regulatory approach will help provide a clear path to compliance and permission to operate for urban mobility concepts. The manufacturing framework is developing fabrication and assembly processes and technologies critical for success of urban mobility. Quality and safety are baseline expectations, so the primary efforts here focus on cost, weight, and environmental impact. The technology framework is informed by the needs created in the other three. Bell and our partners are developing technologies such as electric and hybrid electric distributed propulsion, augmented and autonomous flight controls, and secure remote monitoring and fleet management solutions to form the basis for a new breed of aircraft and the backbone of urban mobility operations. Taken together, these frameworks will inform the continued development of Bell on-demand air mobility concepts. While we are not ready to share our program timelines, we believe viable commercial operations are possible in the mid-2020s. The traffic congestion challenges facing our population centers aren't going away and are not likely to be solved through conventional means. We must approach tomorrow's challenges with innovative thinking that not only helps manage known issues like traffic but also creates new opportunities for technological advancement, for new career fields, for noise and pollution reduction, and for an increased quality of life for our citizens. There is still a lot of work to be done to create a viable flight-based urban air mobility network, but we believe that future is real and coming soon to a neighborhood near you. We look forward to working with you to bring it to life. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify, and I look forward to answering your questions. [The prepared statement of Mr. Thacker follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Thacker. And Ms. Dietrich? TESTIMONY OF MS. ANNA MRACEK DIETRICH, CO-FOUNDER AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS, TERRAFUGIA Ms. Dietrich. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Johnson, and Members of the Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning to talk to you about something that I've been working on for well over the last decade. My name is Anna Mracek Dietrich, and I'm one of the original founders of Terrafugia. I currently lead our company's regulatory and policy efforts. Next slide, please. [Slide.] Ms. Dietrich. Terrafugia was founded in 2006 to help address the $160 billion transportation challenge that we face in this country. Today, we're employing over 150 people across three locations in the United States and are getting ready to bring our first general aviation product, the Transition, what you see on the screen, to market next year. Following Transition, which takes off and lands from airports and is street legal to drive home and park in your garage--we are pursuing an eVTOL concept, which we're currently calling TF-2. Next slide, please. [Slide.] Ms. Dietrich. You can see some information about it here, but I think a video is worth more than 1,000 words if you could please go ahead with that. [Video shown.] Ms. Dietrich. So the idea behind TF-2 is that it is a three-part system. It fully integrates ground and air transportation, so you are picked up by the ground vehicle with the passenger pod at your origin. It drives you to a vertiport where you're connected to an electrical vertical takeoff and landing air vehicle, which then flies you across traffic to your final destination. Unlike some of the other entrants into this space, TF-2 has a little bit of a longer range. We are using a hybrid electric power system for flight, and that gives us a range of around 200 miles, which allows not only urban operations but could bring in people from surrounding rural areas for hospital visits, things like that as well. And then once you are on the ground, another ground vehicle picks you up and takes you to your final destination. We're anticipating around $30 for a 10-minute flight, and that should take about 20 minutes over traffic, so it should be an accessible form of transportation. Next slide, please. [Slide.] Ms. Dietrich. So there's three pieces of the regulatory landscape that I see as being necessary to support this new technology--Ms. Johnson mentioned several of these in her opening remarks--the airworthiness certification, operations and operators, and air-traffic control. The airworthiness certification is the most mature of all of these areas. As was mentioned, the Part 23 rewrite, which was completed last year, is a key piece of that. Having safety intent regulations really do allow additional innovation to be brought into general aviation, so that is where we anticipate certifying these aircraft is in Part 23, Amendment 64. You can see the comparison to Part 27, which is rotorcraft, and it's significantly more appealing to go into Part 23. From the operations and operators' perspective, that's where we start talking about bringing autonomy into the equation, everything from how do we appropriately train pilots to accommodate for new technologies in the cockpit through how do we ultimately certify an aircraft to be safe to be flown without a human directing it? So that's a whole spectrum of efforts that are currently ongoing from both the operational and aircraft certification and training perspectives. Air-traffic control, I see it as very important that we consider our airspace as unified airspace, so it's very tempting to try to segregate both along the lines of existing airspace sort of designations, but as well in terms of industries. And as you can see in the graphic there, it really is a transportation ecosystem. It's a network. Everything from small unmanned drones that might be delivering your packages all the way through commercial airliners, there's a lot of different uses for the sky, and they all need to be combined into a constructive single system. So as we look forward to systems for that, I think there's a few pieces that we need to keep in mind. One is that we need to be thinking about incorporating new technologies into how we control airspace using vehicle-to-vehicle communications, potentially getting away from voice communications, and really looking at it as a single system. Next slide, please. [Slide.] Ms. Dietrich. So there's also some challenges associated with bringing any new technology to market and creating a new industry. These are just a few of them. I've touched on them in more detail in the written testimony, but the four that I'll highlight are connectivity, infrastructure access, technology development, and affordability. By connectivity I mean some of what I was mentioning before, both vehicle-to-vehicle communications and vehicle to air-traffic controller or other ground-based systems. This includes continued-access GPS capabilities, 5G cell data service, and appropriate frequency band allocations for transportation. Infrastructure access spans local, state, and federal levels. Technology development, in many ways we are already well on our way towards the technology that we need to accomplish these missions in these vehicles, but additional research will set the stage for future applications. And then affordability is really primarily within the realm of the manufacturers, but it is of course influenced by how streamlined the certification and operation processes can be. Last slide, please. [Slide.] Ms. Dietrich. So with that, thank you very much for the opportunity. I look forward to answering your questions and continuing the discussion past this morning. [The prepared statement of Ms. Dietrich follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Dietrich. Let me recognize myself for five minutes for questions. And let me ask you if you could possibly keep your answers to one minute. I've got lots of questions and would like to get through as many as possible. Dr. Allison, the first one is for you. What are the advantages of UAM networks over self-driving cars or helicopters? Dr. Allison. Thank you, Congressman, for the question. We see the advantages of this type of aerial ridesharing as the ability to have both higher-speed point-to-point and also higher certainty. So once you take off, the likelihood or the prediction of what time you're going to land is quite accurate versus the ground transportation where you have much more congestion. And so you have both higher speed and lower variance, which adds a unique capability into the transportation network. And these types of vehicles additionally will be quieter, safer, and much cheaper to operate than traditional helicopters, which will make it much more accessible as a transportation system. Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Allison. Ms. Dietrich, the Transition will be the first flying car available for public purchase. How confident are you that they're going to be available to be bought next year? Ms. Dietrich. Well, I'm much more confident that the Transition will be available for purchase in 2019 than I would have been several years ago giving you an estimate. Chairman Smith. Okay. Ms. Dietrich. We are currently tooling up for production. We do have customers in line for delivery, and as of today---- Chairman Smith. Okay. Ms. Dietrich. --things are on track for that---- Chairman Smith. And what do they cost and are you taking orders? Ms. Dietrich. We are taking orders. We have a team at Oshkosh this morning--this week actually for that, and we anticipate--if you're going to do private ownership model, it'll be typical aircraft pricing so---- Chairman Smith. What is that? Ms. Dietrich. Four hundred thousand dollars, in that ballpark. Chairman Smith. Okay. Ms. Dietrich. Airplanes are expensive. Chairman Smith. Okay. Ms. Dietrich. We are looking at other options for being able to use the vehicle---- Chairman Smith. Okay. Ms. Dietrich. --on more of a shared use space---- Chairman Smith. Okay. And in five to ten years, you hope to have some kind of a public transportation taxi service, is that right? Ms. Dietrich. The TF-2 time frame is five to ten years. That's correct. That's the video that we saw this morning. Chairman Smith. And Dr. Allison wants to know, won't you be competing with Uber? Ms. Dietrich. Well, I think there's a very broad market space, and I think Uber is focused on operating inside city centers, and the TF-2 gives you an opportunity to bring people into that city center from surrounding areas. So I see it as a very complementary service actually. Chairman Smith. Wow, you're a politician. Okay. Dr. Shin, on the urban air mobility, NASA has announced a grand challenge. What does that consist of? What are the details? Dr. Shin. Yes, thank you for the question. We envision that private industry investment and the pace of technology advancement is just amazing and great, so we are trying to find exactly what government should be doing to enable the private investment and the progress. So we would like to provide a forum where industry partners can come and check their ability and capabilities. So we--government will provide a certain level of requirements, in--particularly in safety area, in noise area, and areas like that at the system level. Chairman Smith. When will that be announced? When you're going to---- Dr. Shin. We are formulating what sort of exactly the grand challenge should be. As we are speaking, my team has been working on that for a month, and we are hoping to announce the intent by early next year so that industry partners can prepare. Chairman Smith. Okay. Dr. Shin. And then toward the end of next calendar year, we're hoping to announce the grand challenge. Chairman Smith. Okay. That'll be a good incentive. Mr. Thacker, I know you have a partnership with Uber to design vertical takeoff or landing vehicles. My question for you--and obviously, Bell has changed its name from Bell Helicopter to just Bell. That may be part of the answer, but do you think the days of the helicopters are limited or are there still advantages to helicopters? Mr. Thacker. So the days of the helicopter are not limited, but we do see the world changing, and Bell is much more than helicopters. We already are more than helicopters with tiltrotor, with the V-22 and the V-280 for the Army and Marines' future vertical lift needs. But beyond this, this move in technology and convergence of electric, hybrid, and distributed propulsion allows a new breed of vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, one's for markets like the Uber network but also for carrying cargo and logistics, as Dr. Clarke mentioned. We see that as a tremendous opportunity for our business and one that, as a legacy leader in vertical lift, we should be leading as well and so thus the change from Bell Helicopter to Bell. However, from a heavy standpoint from things that require large amounts of lift, there will be hydrocarbon-burning helicopters around for a good long time. Chairman Smith. And perhaps long distances as well? Mr. Thacker. Absolutely. Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Thacker. Dr. Clarke, what kind of public-private partnerships can we expect in coming years? Dr. Clarke. I think, you know, it's not realistic to expect FAA to be expanded to actually dealing with air-traffic control in an urban environment, so I do believe municipalities will be involved for liability reasons, and I think there are a lot of companies out there working on ideas for air-traffic management. And the NASA UTM program has been very instrumental in figuring out how to get people to communicate and different entities communicate together. So ultimately, I see like a cable model where---- Chairman Smith. Yes. Dr. Clarke. --some part of an urban area will be allocated a space for them to provide a service of air-traffic control. Obviously, the regulations have to be--the proper regulations have to be put in place and the communications and handoff from one area to the other will have to be worked out. But I envision a cable model in a short sentence. Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Clarke. That concludes my questions. The gentlewoman from Texas, the Ranking Member, is recognized for hers. Ms. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Clarke, you indicate in your prepared statement that increasingly autonomous capability will be necessary as UAM services expand. Could you highlight what you believe makes that necessary? What will--what kind of attention will be given to the safety risk? What role should research play in mitigating such risk? And who should do this research? Dr. Clarke. Well, I'll start with the last one. I personally believe NASA is in the right position to do that research. So I'm going back to the start of your question, let's start with the commercial side, the Uber side of things. Economies of scale dictate that you'd like to move first to one operator and then no operator of a vehicle. And if you go to one operator, the requirements to train that person to the level of a commercial pilot are onerous and quite expensive. And you have to pay them, and we already have a forecast shortage of pilots. So that drives you there to more autonomous vehicles so that you don't have to have somebody with a commercial pilot license and 1,500 hours operating a vehicle. So you have to then trade that off with some more autonomy to complement their skill sets. And then when you go to no operator or at least nobody in the vehicle operating the vehicle and remote supervision, you have things like loss of communication that become issues, so the vehicles themselves have to be able to operate without a linkage to somebody on the ground. So both of those things, moving to a single pilot, moving to pilots with less training than our current commercial pilots, and going towards completely autonomous systems. I mean, systems that have linkages with the ground which can be lost drive you towards autonomy. And the research needs to be done to figure out how to get--the big thing is how do we get vehicles that, when faced with the situation, don't just say ``does not compute'' and shut down, right? We want vehicles that, when faced with a situation, act more like humans, which basically try to figure out what the issues are, try to figure out where the constraints need to be relaxed, and what needs to be done to at least get them to a safe point, a safe mode, which we've done for many years on the space side where, when things happen, there's always a safe mode to revert to. So that in summary is where I think. Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much. Dr. Allison, in Dr. Clarke's prepared statement he indicates that potential UAM service users are likely to prefer the vertiport locations convenient to their homes and where they're headed. How should that convenience of the UAM users be balanced with community concerns in choosing vertiport locations? Dr. Allison. Thank you, Ranking Member, for your question. This is a very important concern and something that we've spent a lot of time looking into. One of our strengths at Uber is that we do a lot of analysis, simulation and understanding of transportation networks, and so we've made as a core of Elevate an ability to analyze, to infuse together different types of data for different communities that we're looking at in terms of restrictions and noise sensitivities and things like that. To actually determine where an optimal place is based on demand, as well as community considerations are to place the vertiports as we develop our network. And so we want to do this in partnership with the local communities, which is why we've had a very strong engagement with both Dallas-Fort Worth and Los Angeles to actually determine the right way to do this and to do it in a way that works hand-in-hand with local communities to build a service and a network that everyone's very happy with. Ms. Johnson. Thank you. Based on FAA's experience with community resistance to the concentration of flight tracks and all of the application of next-gens, of tracks, and performance-based navigation techniques, it appears--and I don't know what it's going to cost. I don't know if you know yet, but it does appear that the people who might be able to use it are also the ones that do the most complaining about air-traffic noise. And so how do you plan to mitigate that? Dr. Allison. We have as our basis for what we're doing kind of a deep view that community engagement is very important from the very beginning, and so part of our desire to roll this out in a systematic way is to start in places where there is the right level of engagement and the right level of support in the community and to demonstrate the low-noise capabilities and the integration into the local transit system in a way that demonstrates the utility and the overall value proposition of this type of transportation to the wider community. And so that's the approach that we're taking as we roll this out. Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much. My time is expired. Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. The gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Lucas, is recognized for questions. Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I represent--and I guess I should direct my question to Dr. Allison and Mr. Thacker and Mrs. Dietrich-- I represent a part of the country that benefited greatly from the establishment of the U.S. highway system. And when you're in Oklahoma, of course you're on the old historic Route 66, the commerce road from Chicago to Los Angeles, and it dramatically expanded the availability of services, the nature of the economy in rural America. So let's talk for a moment about--and I know our initial focus is on the urban areas--but let's talk about how long you would expect the benefits of urban air mobility to work from the urban zone out into the suburbs, the rural areas so to speak. Mr. Thacker. So I'm happy to take a stab at that---- Mr. Lucas. Please. Mr. Thacker. --and then let my colleagues join in. Honestly, we see the timeline for some of the applications being very similar. At Bell we are developing all-electric solutions for applications like the Uber network, but we're developing hybrid electric solutions with modular propulsion to extend the range. So the ability to deliver goods and services, provide emergency medical capabilities, things that general aviation already provides to rural communities with these vehicles and with this system, it should be available in a similar time frame. In reality, it may be available to some degree sooner because, from an operational standpoint, we will begin operating over lightly populated areas before we operate over heavily populated urban areas. Ms. Dietrich. And I would second what Mr. Thacker said. I think that there is a real possibility to bring more rural areas, more into some of the advantages that you have in the urban areas, getting access to hospitals, more expedited cargo delivery, things like that. I think this industry has the ability to serve those areas very well, and I agree with the timing and I agree with the hybrid propulsion solutions that provide a longer range. You know, TF-2 has a range of around 200 miles. Those sorts of solutions will bring access to those communities probably on the same time frame as the all-electric versions to city centers. Dr. Allison. Yes, our network is focused on higher-density areas because a lot of the ability to drive utilization and load factor into vehicles is one of the ways we're able to drive costs down at least in our predictions on a cost per passenger mile. So certainly, as we extend to less densely populated areas, we'll have to revisit some of those assumptions and look at the way the network flows are modeled in--as the density decreases. Mr. Lucas. This question I address to the whole panel. And I go back once again to Route 66. When that was initially laid down, the average automobile that would have puttered down the road in Oklahoma would have been a Ford Model T, very simple four-cylinder, minimal mufflers, no emission control essentially whatsoever, but a very effective mass-produced automobile that the country--for that matter, the world-- adopted and it led to an explosion and huge advancements in automobile technology. Assuming that this is a similar path moved forward a century with the initial success and the mass adoption--because we all tend to move as a group in this great country when it comes to new technology, it seems--let's go back once more to that issue about how we manage air traffic. If we suddenly go from the Model T's of the 1920s to the automobiles of the '30s, '40s, '50s, we'll have a dramatic explosion in the utilization of the airspace. I live in a part of western Oklahoma where, while it seems very thinly populated, we are under a military air reservation. We have training flights, primary pilots, the transport Air Force cargo planes that train all the time. We've got the East- West traffic, the commercial stuff with the higher elevations, which I realize is above where we're talking about going, but let's discuss for just a moment the public-private sector relationship, how we think they'll advance. Can we keep up when it comes to managing that air-traffic flow if there is an explosion in utilization? Ms. Dietrich. I thank you for bringing up the history of the automobile and bringing that industry online because when first those Model T's were rolled out, we didn't have the transportation infrastructure on the ground that we do today either. We didn't have stoplights at every corner. Mr. Lucas. Exactly. Ms. Dietrich. We didn't have, you know, the rules of the road---- Mr. Lucas. And my great-grandfather said it was---- Ms. Dietrich. Yes. Mr. Lucas. --a silly fad at the time, yes. Ms. Dietrich. Exactly. So we have a history of being able to kind of evolve very quickly in these ways, and I think we will see something similar with these vehicles. And I think we can do a lot today in laying the groundwork and preparing ourselves for them, but I think we also do have to stay a bit nimble on our feet and be prepared to adapt as we see where this industry truly goes and where the demand really surfaces. So I think we can--and I know the work is being done here is definitely in line with preparing us for that, but I think at the same time we need to be willing to accept the fact that we don't exactly know how this is going to play out and that there will be things that arise that we haven't been able to foresee and that we should be able to adapt as we go and have confidence in our ability to do so. Mr. Lucas. Thank you. My time is expired, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Lucas. The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Beyer, is recognized. Now, I know the gentleman has a certain interest in car dealerships. When it is he going to start selling flying cars? Mr. Beyer. Yes, I just came to see if I could get a franchise today, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Allison--this is relevant for everyone, but Dr. Allison, I'm picking on you. And I live in northern Virginia, which has the longest commute times in the country, the second- worst congestion. You come in I-66, I-95, I-395, the GW Parkway in the morning and it's just bumper-to-bumper sometimes all day long. So I keep trying to imagine--and often, when I'm in traffic, I imagine moving to the third dimension. But I'm trying to figure how many cars do you really need to remove from a congested I-95 to get it to actually flow? And when you look at the size of the vehicles that we've seen in the videos, which are going to require more front space, rear space, left, right, and above and below just because they're airplanes rather than cars, it'd be fascinating to see the video that shows how you've taken, say, 20 percent, 25 percent of the cars off and how incredibly congested the airspace goes above, especially if you assume--and I do--that the communities are going to insist that the lanes are defined for these vehicles, too, that you're not just flying over neighborhoods that--as right now, the helicopters are supposed to fly along the existing corridors. I can see why you need autonomous, too, because if you start putting all these people up in the air that are texting while they're flying their plane, it can become incredibly difficult so---- Dr. Allison. Thank you, Congressman, for the question. So the vision that we have is that this will happen progressively over time, so it won't start with, you know, many, many, many aircraft flying around. It will start with a few, and we'll build up the systems as we learn, as Anna was saying actually. However, if you think about the three dimensions of the space available to sequence and structure--and we've done lots of simulations of this as well--vehicles flying between different points in the point-to-point type of a network, at a couple thousand feet you don't actually get to the same type of congestion that you see on the ground because there's just a lot more space and you can space things out. And one of the features of the types of vehicles that we're all talking about here, these vertical takeoff and landing electric vehicles that convert from rotor-borne flight in the takeoff and landing phase to wing-borne flight in the cross- country phase is that they get dramatically quieter and more efficient as they're flying in vertical flight. So when they're up at cruise altitude and flying along, they're very quiet, you basically don't hear them. They're not the same as a helicopter where they make a significant amount of noise through the whole segment of the flight that they're on. So those different features, the fact that there's a lot of space in order to space things out, the fact that they're pretty quiet, and they go a lot faster than cars, too, so we're talking 150 to 200 miles an hour in terms of the cruise speed allows the airspace to soak up a lot more traffic than---- Mr. Beyer. Okay. Dr. Allison. --you'd expect based on the way ground networks, which are basically kind of quasi-one dimensionaltworks clog up with cars. Mr. Beyer. All right. Thank you very much. Dr. Clarke, picking up on what Dr. Allison just said, in your testimony you talked about the similarities between helicopters and urban air mobility and that a likely side effect of urban air mobility could be the constant drone of aircraft noise. I don't need to tell you that the number-one concern in my district is aircraft noise followed closely by helicopter noise. How do we assure those folks that--you know, our research into UAM is really focusing on the noise piece, too. Dr. Clarke. Well, that's part of the reason why I suggested in my testimony that there needs to be research and a tool--and this hasn't--it's not going to be just one company or one manufacturer. It has to be a government or the community, broad community, accepted and verified tool for optimizing the trajectories to make sure that the noise level is above the ambient. I mean, in the end, people worry about what's above the ambient. I mean, you look back to the Grand Canyon, you know, people said, oh, the airplane is quiet, the helicopter is quiet, but if it's above 35 DB or 40 DB in the afternoons, people complain. And that's very quiet, but people have gone to the Grand Canyon for that natural quiet. And so it--you always have to match the noise level with the ambient, and we have to--we can do it, but it will require a lot of optimization of where the vertiports are, what routes they're flying. And I would add privacy to one of those things because we actually don't know how people are going to react to vehicles being that close to their houses. And we have to do some studies to actually figure it out. And in fact we don't know how people are going to respond to vehicles flying, you know, at 400 feet or 1,000 feet on a long distance at that constant altitude because we're accustomed to vehicles basically taking off and going to much higher altitudes. So there's work to be done to understand people's responses, and then there's work to be done to model, and then there's work to be done to optimize the trajectories because, ultimately, we want to enable UAM. I mean, I'm an airplane guy, but---- Mr. Beyer. Yes. Dr. Clarke. --we want to do it right. Mr. Beyer. It is going to change sunbathing in the backyards, though. Dr. Clarke. Yes, I suspect it will. Mr. Beyer. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Beyer. The gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Abraham, is recognized. Mr. Abraham. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I appreciate the hand-up you gave of the history of the flying car going back to 1947. I know in 1949, Moulton Taylor had an Aerocar that actually flew. And to your James Bond fondness, as--which I am--if you remember, The Man with the Golden Gun had a flying car in that movie also. Ms. Dietrich, I was there when Terrafugia premiered their car at Oshkosh. After votes Thursday, I'll also be flying to Oshkosh, and your booth is always the most popular. There's always a large crowd, so you certainly have the attention of the aviators of the world, so I think we're getting close. And I'm not too worried about the noise level. I know you guys will have to get it right from a business standpoint or you won't survive. That's going to be driven by both civilian population, as Dr. Clarke alluded to. I guess my concern--and it's been brought up--is transitioning from an uncontrolled airspace where basically you can do what you want to, to a controlled airspace and whether it's class delta, which is in a small community or whether it's class B, as you guys know that are on the board there, that airspace is controlled from surface up to 4,000, up to 10,000 in class B. So ATC has control in even a small city from surface on up. And a day like today where it's cloudy, the ceiling is low, I'm concerned that if you have an autonomous vehicle that, you know, gets lost in the clouds, it gets basically disoriented, and unfortunately, you know, bad things happen. Ms. Dietrich, I'll I guess go to you first. I'm assuming that for the Terrafugia Transition car a pilot's license will be required to purchase that car? Ms. Dietrich. Well, thank you for the question. Thank you for the kind words. Yes, for Transition, our first product, that's a light sport aircraft, so you will need a sport pilot license or better in order to fly that aircraft. And depending on the qualifications of the pilot in the aircraft, you wouldn't be flying that particular aircraft in a day like today. From an instrument--meteorological-conditions perspective, autonomy is actually a safety benefit in those areas because all of the sensors that you would use to fly an aircraft on a sunny day are the same as the ones you would use to fly on a cloudy day. So autonomous capabilities can actually increase safety in bad weather, which is one of the reasons why we're considering incorporating them not just in these urban air mobility vehicles but looking at ways to bring them in to broader general aviation as well. Mr. Abraham. And I'll agree with that. I fly Cirrus, which has wonderful avionics and certainly can make me a much better pilot in conditions like this than me flying myself, so, you know, I can't argue there. And we know that in you all's world we're having to convert to ADS-B Out by 2020, and if you ADS Out--and cars--flying cars and certainly airplanes can talk to each other, so that may alleviate some of the burden on air-traffic control. Again, I worry also, you know, about the weight and balance, if you get somebody that does not know aerodynamics and they get into an autonomous vehicle that overloads its weight and balance capability, then you're in a dangerous situation. And, Dr. Allison, I know Uber and companies like yours are thinking along those lines. And I'll just let you comment. Dr. Allison. Sure. Thank you, Congressman, for your question. Those are all very important considerations, and we are certainly going to take a crawl-walk-run approach to this as we develop the networks. We will start with demonstration flights initially, experimental flights basically in conjunction with our partners in the partner cities, and then as--we will learn from that as we move toward the 2023 launch of the commercial flights that we're ambitiously projecting. So these questions of weight and balance, those will all have to be figured out by learning, by actually simulating these things and testing them in practice as we roll toward that initial startup commercial service. Mr. Abraham. And for you and Ms. Dietrich, are you planning on building these cars under part 23? Ms. Dietrich. Yes, sir. Part 23, amendment 64, is a good fit for these aircraft. There's about 80 percent of that rule that applies directly without any need for modification, ten percent that's just simply not applicable like landing on water. And then there's about ten percent of that rule where we'll need to work with the FAA for special conditions or other consideration where it just wasn't originally contemplated. But by and large it's a good fit. Mr. Abraham. And the FAA has helped a little bit with the regulation, part 23, as far as that? Ms. Dietrich. Yes. Mr. Abraham. Dr. Shin, do you have any comments on any of this? Dr. Shin. No, I think I support everything the other witnesses mentioned. I think I want to point out that this is a great opportunity for the country, that from very high-tech but low-volume industry that aviation has been accepted, general aviation part. We are actually looking at the possibility of turning the aviation industry as a whole from--it's still very high-tech--but extremely high volume just like automobile industry. So I think government really needs to find a way to enable this new capability for the country, our national economy, and jobs. Mr. Abraham. Well, I agree. And look, I think it's an exciting time and I wish all you guys the best of luck. I think the future is bright, so thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Abraham. The gentleman from California, Mr. McNerney, is recognized. Mr. McNerney. I thank the Chairman for having an interesting hearing and for passing out party favors as well. One of the things that worries me about this subject is energy consumption. I mean, these things are going to--the--a flying vehicle is going to take a lot more energy than a surface vehicle. Can someone address the differential and how much more energy it's going to take to get somebody from point A to point B on a flying vehicle than a surface vehicle? Dr. Allison. I'm happy to jump in. Mr. McNerney. Sure. Dr. Allison. Thank you, Congressman, for the question. So, actually, the amount of energy per passenger mile is similar to an electric car, so for an all-electric version of these vehicles. Because they have to be very efficient in order to make it work essentially, that you have to design the aerodynamics and tailor the energy consumption for the vertical takeoff and landing phases of this, that it's not substantially different than a surface vehicle when it's all said and done because of the much more enhanced aerodynamic design and tailoring that has to be done for these types of air vehicles. Mr. McNerney. So speaking of aerodynamics, I mean, how much--how fast do you have to go to get one of these vehicles off the ground? I mean, there's a speed issue here which must-- yes? Dr. Allison. So the concept of most of what we're talking about is to take off and land vertically, so they actually take off at zero speed just like a helicopter and then transition to forward flight either--through different means so the different--different of our vehicle partners are approaching this problem in different ways. We have different types of vehicle concepts that accomplish that transitioning regime differently. But then once they're wing-borne, they fly like an airplane on the wing, which is much, much more efficient than flying rotor-borne, and that allows them to be lower noise and higher performance. Mr. McNerney. Well, thank you. And again, I don't know who to ask this question of, but according to a 2015 GAO report, newly developed aircraft may be particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks and cyber issues. If a hacker is able to overcome an aircraft's firewall, it could cause significant damage. Where do we stand with regard to security on these and being able to provide the security that we need to make sure that there's not a safety issue? Dr. Clarke. So I'll take that. My committee, the one I chaired--co-chaired in 2014, I identified security as being a major issue. I have briefed the then-DNI on this topic and I can't talk about that here, but I know that work is being done very extensively looking at this. As you rightly point out, there are vulnerabilities that need to be addressed. You know, in the old days, air-traffic control had security from obscurity in that nobody could get in, and therefore, you couldn't do anything. Now that you have lots of wireless networks and IP protocols, there are opportunities, and people are working hard on this I know on this topic. Mr. Thacker. Yes, I agree, and I think the key with it is an ongoing vigilance because it isn't a static target that says---- Mr. McNerney. Right. Mr. Thacker. --we've solved cyber and now we're ready to go forward. It's going to be something that we have to continue to adjust and adapt as we go forward because the threats will continue to adapt as well. Mr. McNerney. So I've asked about energy, I've asked about cyber. What about cost? Is there going to be a comparable cost of a flying vehicle versus a surface vehicle? Dr. Allison. Thank you for the question. We--so what we have announced--we--at the--a big event we did in the spring is that our initial targets for rollout of this service, we kind of have announced a series of target-priced steps that we believe we can essentially match UberBLACK pricing in the initial rollout of the--in the target cities, Dallas-Fort Worth and Los Angeles, by increasing utilization and increasing the load factor by utilizing pooling out of our ground network. We think we can get to UberX-type pricing, which is around, say, $1.50 per passenger mile roughly speaking. And that's enabled by aggressively pooling to drive load factor into the vehicles and get the utilization up. And ultimately, we see at scale with improved manufacturing techniques that are more akin to the automotive industry, that we can be competitive with the costs and again on a passenger- mile basis of car ownership, which is something like 44 cents a mile I think AAA says right now. Mr. McNerney. Okay. All right. Mr. Chairman, I'll suppress my next question and yield back. Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. McNerney. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Babin, is recognized for his questions. Mr. Babin. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that and appreciate all of you witnesses. What a fascinating topic. Dr. Shin, is the United States maintaining its leadership role in the growing and evolving market for this aviation market? With regard to urban air mobility, will we be first to launch operations or might we lose out to some other country? And if so, what nation, and what are the consequences of not being first? Dr. Shin. Well, thank you for the question. I think it is fair to say--and I do believe that the United States still is leading the--this new potential market and capability from that perspective because, as I said in the oral testimony, we have the best minds and best technologies and best entrepreneur spirit. However, I even coined--I made up an English word called most developed country syndrome, so we are the most developed country in the world, and along with that, we have a lot of interests that some other countries may not care that much or they will be willing to relax some of those concerns. So the name of the game in this area in my view is since entry cost is very low compared to regular commercial airline business, most--probably most developed countries or developing countries can actually start this industry if they are willing to lower or relax the constraints and issues from a regulatory perspective, some safety perspective, and so on, so that is indeed a concern. And as you all know, some of the countries are jumping ahead and allowing even U.S. companies go to those countries. Mr. Babin. Who are those countries? Dr. Shin. They are Australia, New Zealand, and some of the European countries willing to do that, and Singapore or so--so some of the countries--again, I'm not suggesting they are lowering the safety standard, but they're willing to---- Mr. Babin. Okay. Dr. Shin. --jump ahead. So that is a concern. But I do believe we have the--still the way to scale this up, as Dr. Allison and---- Mr. Babin. Okay. Dr. Shin. --Ms. Dietrich talked about. Mr. Babin. Thank you. Once the UAM system is in place and multiple options exist for people to travel by air taxi, how long will it take before people will be able to own and operate their own VTOL vehicles? You may have already touched on this a little bit. I had to leave the room. And how much more complicated will it be to do the air-traffic control management, Ms. Dietrich? Ms. Dietrich. Yes, thank you for the question. I think that many of us in this space are not anticipating a private ownership model for the vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. I think we're seeing those as probably being cost-prohibitive for an individual owner, as well as if this system works the way envisioned, it won't be necessary. You'll be able to get the functionality without the headache and without the upfront expense. Mr. Babin. Right. Ms. Dietrich. So I do expect that these vehicles will be really dramatically increasing the number of aircraft that we see in the general aviation industry. My company alone is looking at deliveries on the order of a few thousand a year. That's currently basically the entire size of the GA industry each year. So this industry will rapidly become more of the norm than what we see in legacy aircraft today, and I think we're going to have to be conscious of that as we think about new constructs of both ownership and usage of these vehicles in that what folks typically think of as smaller planes in general aviation today will become a small piece of a much larger industry that brings the benefits of transportation by small aircraft to many more people but is not what we currently think of. Mr. Babin. Okay. Thank you. And Mr. McNerney had touched on this a little while ago, but just to be more specific, cybersecurity is a topic of serious concern whenever we discuss technologies, especially those that are new and nascent. How will the VTOL vehicles be protected from cybersecurity attacks, and who will be responsible for that protection? Will it be the vehicle manufacturer, the company that runs the operating system, the FAA, or someone else? And who would like to respond to that? Dr. Clarke? Dr. Clarke. Sure. I'm a faculty member, you know. We always---- Mr. Babin. Right. Dr. Clarke. So precedence is that the operators ultimately are going to be the ones that are responsible. I'll give you a quick example. Every 28 days, we update the database of waypoints in the country that goes into flight management system, and even though the person putting it in might actually make a mistake, if something happens, it's the operator of the airline that's responsible because---- Mr. Babin. Sure. Dr. Clarke. --they need to check. So they actually have staff members checking that database every 28 days, so that's what precedent would suggest. Ultimately, it's going to be a partnership. The one thing about aviation is that it truly has been and will continue to be a partnership between regulators, operators, and manufacturers. And there--like I said, there are people doing work, which I can't talk about, on the cybersecurity issue, but there are--they're going to be--it's going to be a partnership, and people are going to basically figure out how to do some tests of things coming in and out. Communication is one thing. There are companies thinking about using in-flight entertainment systems for doing communications of flight-critical information. There are people working on how to do that and keeping track of whether there's been nefarious tampering with the---- Mr. Babin. Okay. Dr. Clarke. --data, et cetera. Mr. Babin. Okay. Thank you very much. And I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Babin. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Lamb, is recognized, and I have a quick question for him. Did you hear you were going to get a flying car if you attended the hearing today? Mr. Lamb. Well, I actually came here in a flying car, but it was a little late so that was why I showed up a little late, so I guess there's more research---- Chairman Smith. I just want you to know there's only three left but you made it. Mr. Lamb. Oh, wow. Okay. Dr. Clarke--or anybody can take this but I wanted to address it first to Dr. Clarke. This actually seems like an industry that could create a fair number of jobs both in terms of the operators themselves, the engineers, designers, manufacturers. Does anyone have a sense of the potential impact in terms of numbers of jobs that we could be talking about, let's say, in the next decade? Dr. Clarke. I can't give you specific numbers so--but I can tell you that I've been a faculty member for 21 years. This is the most excited I've ever seen students around aviation. I mean, people are always excited about space, but this is the most excited I've seen people around aviation. And you know I think there's a great potential for jobs. I mean, I have undergrad students who are thinking about doing a startup. In fact, they've been building a wind tunnel in somebody's--they are looking for a flying vehicle which looks like a motorcycle, and they're trying to figure out where to move that wind tunnel. In fact, they sent me a message like, ``Do you know somebody where we can move this wind tunnel?'' They're funding themselves, so there's a great excitement. There's great potential. And, you know, to Uber's credit, they have basically said we're not going to build a vehicle but we're going to provide specifications and leave it out there for lots of others to do that. And the--you know, the challenge, the Boeing challenge around a flying motorcycle, that's generated a great deal of interest. And so I think the potential for jobs are tremendous. I can't give you a number because that's not--maybe the guys here who--will know how many people they're going to hire will tell you. Mr. Lamb. Anyone? Anyone have---- Ms. Dietrich. I can offer a little bit of information. So since Terrafugia has really entered this space, we've been hiring on average five people a week, and we don't have plans to slow that down. So that's just one company. I would say that we're probably talking--when this industry is mature across all of the participants--between two and three orders of magnitude larger than the existing GA industry just to give you a sense. Mr. Lamb. And what about in terms of encouraging domestic manufacturing of all the equipment that we're going to need for this and the supply chain? Anyone have any thoughts on that? Mr. Thacker? Mr. Thacker. Yes, so, again, you think about the production volumes for existing aviation, general aviation in particular on--in numbers of tens, if you're at 100 a year, you're having a pretty stellar year. Maybe at the smaller end of light GA, you get into a few hundred a year. When you're talking about hundreds to thousands a year of somewhat larger vehicles that we're discussing here, it's a tremendous opportunity from a manufacturing standpoint for our country as well. Mr. Lamb. Anyone else? Dr. Allison. Just to amplify that a little bit, from our perspective we've been doing a lot of demand studies, so we've built these demand models. We look at trip flow. I actually presented some of this at the event in the spring for the L.A. region. But our studies suggest that at scale when this network is fully developed and it's soaking up, you know, possibly even double-digit percentages of overall trip flow in a region like L.A., that you could be talking about not just thousands but tens of thousands of vehicles active, enough demand to support that. Now, it would take a lot of time to get there, obviously, building out the network, but that's an incredible number compared to what the industry can produce right now. And so we have to see this industry grow significantly, as Ms. Dietrich said, multiple orders of magnitude, and it makes a lot of sense to produce these vehicles closer to where you're deploying them as well from a logistics standpoint because they're generally larger than cars and harder to ship and things like that, so I think there's going to be a lot of impetus to build out manufacturing capabilities here in the U.S. to be able to produce the volumes that this service or this type of transportation will demand. Mr. Lamb. Dr. Shin? Dr. Shin. Yes, if I can just add one more point, I think it is important for all of us to recognize that when we use urban air mobility, it truly includes from smallest UAS to air taxi and personal air vehicles and commuters and all those things that truly changing the landscape of aviation today. So as you are probing about the jobs and supply chains and all that, I think we need to really look at the holistic way of package delivery to passenger carrying small and large. And another question about the rural area, all these things should be considered as this air mobility. For the time being, we're using urban air mobility, but I think that opens up all these possibilities. Mr. Lamb. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield the remainder of my time. Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Lamb. The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Webster, is recognized for his questions. Mr. Webster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for doing this committee hearing and presentation. This is an awesome and very interesting subject. Dr. Clarke, I went to Georgia Tech, so we've sort of crossed paths. And Representative Massie, who was here earlier, went to MIT when you did. He was a double-E. But anyway, we're glad you're here. I got an opportunity to speak to the graduating class last year in the May graduation. That was a real thrill. Anyway, you mentioned in your presentation four different-- well, not obstacles, hurdles, let's say--to cross. Do you see any of those that are insurmountable? Dr. Clarke. No, I do not. I think they're all doable. I will say, you know, one of the things--the whole issue of autonomous operations versus decision-making is one of those that is particularly challenging because, you know, a lot of the things that people think about autonomy is really autonomous operations, you know, it's computer code, it's been validated, verified. It operates under certain conditions, and when things are unusual or in a situation it doesn't--it says, ``I can't do anymore; I give up.'' Mr. Webster. That'd be a little scary. Dr. Clarke. It is a little scary. And so there is work--I just--the National Science Foundation just announced a major program on autonomous decision-making just this past week where they're trying to actually get the fundamental research done and to basically decide how systems should decide to operate. So, you know, I think the ultimate idea or exemplar of what autonomous decision-making are kids. I have twins and they're 11 and they're getting to that stage where they're getting to the autonomous decision-making. And you always think of yourself, which you've basically given them, you know, life lessons. You teach them how to think, not what to think but how to think, and that's really the great challenge in autonomy, teaching or building systems that actually learn and adapt and can adapt to situations they have not seen before. And so that's the challenge that I think is one of the biggest ones, but there is work being done both at NASA but, like I said, the National Science Foundation just launched a major effort in this area, and I don't think it's insurmountable. It shouldn't surprise you that I have some ideas about how to solve that problem. So I don't think it's insurmountable. Mr. Webster. So do you see them running on parallel tracks and like they could be separate solutions to each one, not necessarily waiting on the other one to be solved? Dr. Clarke. Right. No, and that will be the case and that has been the case where, for example, in autonomous cars we have a lot of algorithms in place that only operate under certain conditions, and when they get close to the edge, they basically say to some human supervisor, look, I can't get a solution. I personally believe that autonomy is more than just handing it over to the human when you can't figure it out. I think, you know, there's lots of opportunities for autonomous systems to help humans identify when they're getting close to the edge and basically staying away from the edge. And so there's--there are opportunities in the near term to introduce autonomy within limited settings but then gradually increase the level until the point where we get to full autonomous decision-making. Mr. Webster. Do you have any predictions on when that point will be? Dr. Clarke. When? My usual guess is around ten years, five to ten years, given the level of effort that is now--that I'm now seeing starting to pick up. Obviously, that will be--have to be a sustained effort to keep it going, but I think five to ten years we will get to the point where we'll have autonomous decision-making at the level that I would feel comfortable getting--I mean, getting on an airplane without having to worry about that. Mr. Webster. You'd be willing to get on it and ride it? Dr. Clarke. Oh, yes. Ms. Dietrich. If I may build on that just briefly, we're taking an approach with our designs that allow this spectrum to happen organically, so initially, we are going to have a commercial pilot on board the aircraft that's responsible for the flight operations. We are also going to have in parallel with that pilot all the sensors and autonomy routines running in the background. So we'll be able to be collecting data on what that system is doing and comparing it to what the pilot is doing, and they'll be able to help each other. And as we gain more and more confidence as this progression happens, we'll be able to allocate more and more responsibilities to the system itself. But we're not going to wait for the magic day when all of a sudden, ooh, it's done. We're working on that progression in an organic way for product rollout. Mr. Webster. Okay. I yield back. Thank you all so much. Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Webster. The gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Norman, is recognized for his questions. Mr. Norman. Thank you all for being here. This is fascinating. It really is. You know, in what you're doing, you're going to be facing-- I guess dealing with a lot of regulatory agencies both on a federal level, state level, and local level. How do you navigate that? And this is really for anybody. When do you start the process? Because it looks like it would be a challenge. Mr. Thacker. So I'm sure multiple people will have comments, but I think the key is you start early, you start now. We've already started. I think from a vehicle and operations standpoint, it's really important to get the whole FAA involved and to get a consistent outcome. We saw that with the drone as well when eventually the FAA basically put in place a structure that it was able to pull across all of the vehicle--the flight standards operation side and air traffic to help move that forward. We need to do that at the outset here to make sure that we have consistent regulation across those and we don't overburden any individual part of the system. And then we need to be involved in communities. That's why with Uber, you know, we've had outreach to Los Angeles, to Dallas-Fort Worth areas where we can start the conversation, understand the community needs, make sure that we're reacting to those. The last thing that we need is to have a patchwork of requirements across the country. We really need to have some consistency that allows us to execute in a scaled kind of way with the same vehicles, the same sort of operational models tailored locally with vertiport locations and things like that to manage noise, privacy, and other concerns but a consistent overall model from a regulatory standpoint, as well as from an operational standpoint. Dr. Shin. If I may build on Mr. Thacker's point, last point that this is a golden opportunity for the country that we can actually do this together in a very concerted and systematic manner. We don't have to repeat the same way that, as you mentioned, the patch jobs that we did 60, 70 years ago. So I think in the vehicle certification side, industry has been working really hard to get there, and I'm very optimistic that industry partners will get there. And from a government perspective, FAA and NASA have been working really well together to enable this new capability. So I think, again, my point is this is one chance that we can actually design the system right and everybody, public and private, working together to come up with the robust system as best as we can design and from the get-go. So I think we're all working together. We're just representing various small segments of the community, but I can assure you that a lot of entities are working together in this field. Dr. Clarke. I would add that, you know, you can never start speaking to regulators early enough when it comes to aviation in the sense because you're always pushing the envelope and you're all bringing technology to the--for which they don't necessarily have expertise in-house. And so that's one of the foremost reasons for starting early. I think in this case, you know, as I said earlier, I see a model for--a cable model for air-traffic control services just because it's just not practical in my view to have the FAA doing air-traffic management inside urban air sections. So I think there's going to be a new sense for certification, for certifying the companies and the entities that are doing the air-traffic management, which we haven't had to do before because that was all internal to the FAA. So I think there's going to be a need for regulations and processes for making sure that the folks who are actually managing the traffic are doing so in the way that you would like them to. So that's one area which I think is slightly different than we've had before in aviation where, you know, it was just about the vehicles and the operators but not about air-traffic control. Now, we'll have to be able to do certification around it, and we'll have to make it nimble. You know, one of the things about aviation is we have very rigorous standards and implicitly--and in some cases explicitly--we get some release on liability. Some of those standards are quite onerous and take a long time, and if you want not--if we don't want to throttle the growth of this industry, we'll have to figure out a model that is more nimble in regards to certification. And that's something that I think will require some legislation at some point. Mr. Norman. I think that's where Congress comes in because we represent different constituencies, and we'll have a lot of concerns, both positive and negative. What about other countries? Technology-wise, it looks like that would be an area that you could collaborate with. Are you doing any of that with other nations? Ms. Dietrich. I will say that from a regulatory perspective we've had a lot of cooperation from other international civil aviation authorities, particularly EASA, so the new Part 23, Amendment 64, is harmonized with CS-23, Amendment 5, so that is very beneficial for the industry at large. Mr. Norman. Yes, I wasn't talking about regulations. I was mainly thinking about technology-wise. I know as I get around my district a lot of the machinery comes from Germany, other countries. Is this something that you could possibly get with other nations on to look at? Dr. Shin. So NASA is a member of 26 member-states, an organization called International Forum for Aviation Research, so we--NASA was a founding member, along with the German aerospace agency some ten years ago when we formed this. The members are all government-backed or sponsored research organizations, so we're working to find out what the precompetitive but common technologies that we can raise the water level together and also harmonizing some of the technologies as standard possibly. So we're working with them and also we're working heavily with FAA, which represents the United States to the International Civil Aviation Organization, as Ms. Dietrich mentioned. So a lot of work needs to be done, and I think you're pointing out very important points. Still a lot needs to be done, but I think the necessary part is working together. Mr. Norman. Well, thank you so much. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Norman. The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Dunn, is recognized for his questions. Mr. Dunn. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for having this meeting. I mean, really, thank you. This is so fun. This is catnip to aviation enthusiasts. So like many of us, you know, I've spent hours poring over Popular Mechanics magazines, many of which were printed before anybody on the panel was born, pictures of flying cars and, you know, looking at that stuff, so it's exciting to actually have a chance to look at this in a--can I call this a professional manner? My wife and sons, they fly. I'm not a pilot, but they all are, and we've flown into Oshkosh for fun a number of times. Oshkosh started yesterday, by the way. If I was there right now, could I be shopping for flying cars? Panel, anybody know? Ms. Dietrich. Terrafugia has an exhibit there. Mr. Dunn. I could be shopping for a flying car today if I was in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Let the record reflect that. That's just amazing, so cool. So I'm not going to ask any technical questions. I think you guys are smarter than me. You could solve all the FAA questions and, you know, the hybrid and everything and the balance weight. I think you're going to have to have autonomous because, let's face it, you know, flying planes is serious business. But what I want to know from this very learned panel is, of all these examples of flying cars here, which one or two do you want the most? And I just want you to go right down the panel, tell me which one you think is the coolest. Start with you, Dr. Shin. Dr. Shin. As a government person, I shouldn't---- Mr. Dunn. See, everybody likes one. All right. What do you---- Dr. Shin. But I--not generically, I like intermodal convenient way to do this, so whatever the designs may be and whatever the companies may be, it should be very--from my door at the home and---- Mr. Dunn. Okay. So all the way, door-to-door. Okay. That's great. Sort of The Jetsons thing, right? Did you like the Aston Martin version? That's pretty cool, huh? Dr. Shin. I'm a little bit of a car nut, so that was really fancy that they put on. Mr. Dunn. Dr. Clarke? Dr. Clarke. So I have mixed minds here because, as Ms. Dietrich will tell you, I used to teach her husband when he was an undergrad. And, as Dr. Allison will tell you, my--one of my Ph.D. students is his lead analyst and optimizer and modeler, so I have interest in both solutions. I got to tell you, Mr. Chairman, I--and other members, I am a James Bond fan---- Mr. Dunn. I knew it. Dr. Clarke. --and I'm also a Jetsons fan, so I actually like the idea of being able to leave your house and basically be able to go from door-to-door. I mean-- Mr. Dunn. Door-to-door. Dr. Clarke. --door-to-door is the ultimate, right? That's what we care about. Mr. Dunn. That's it. So--well, Mr. Allison, do you care to respond? Dr. Allison. So we have five amazing vehicle partners with Uber Elevate, and I'm very excited to see all five of those vehicles fly sometime soon. Mr. Dunn. So you don't have one that you would maybe want to tuck in the garage first? Dr. Allison. I'm very excited to see all of them fly, but Mr. Thacker's vehicle from Bell will also be one of the great ones. Mr. Dunn. Outstanding. Mr. Thacker. I'm obviously biased towards the Bell solution, and I do believe that the air taxi will bring a sweeping change to how we move about cities, and I'm excited about that one because I think it will be here sooner than the door-to-door solution, and it's something that all of us will be able to take part in. So--and if you'd like to experience that, we have a virtual experience that I welcome any of you to come take when you get the chance. Mr. Dunn. Will you share the information with the staff so they can get it to us? Mr. Thacker. Absolutely. Mr. Dunn. Thank you. So that will be very important. So, please---- Ms. Dietrich. Well, I have---- Mr. Dunn. --solve my dilemma. Pick one for me. Ms. Dietrich. I was one of the founders of Terrafugia specifically because I wanted a Transition, so fortunately, next year, I should be able to get to really fly a Transition again and use that vehicle a little bit. It's not quite the urban mobility that we're talking about, but to be able to fly and drive the same vehicle, I'm very excited about that. Building and flying a vehicle that I helped create was one of my career goals. Mr. Dunn. I agree. Okay. I have a very large district, and I think you've just solved one of the problems I have here. Now, which one of these should I choose to commute across a district that's 350 miles long, eight hours of driving on the interstate, more if you take the back roads, lots of back roads, lots of farms? Ms. Dietrich. Well, I would recommend a TF-2 for you, and that---- Mr. Dunn. TF-2. Write this down. Ms. Dietrich. The 200-mile minimum range with a ground vehicle integration so you'll be able to get the back roads and the vertical flight component. Mr. Dunn. What options should I order? Ms. Dietrich. We can talk about customization. Mr. Dunn. Mr. Chairman, let me say thank you again for having this meeting. It's been one of the high points of my time in Congress. I yield back. Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. I think she'll offer you a discount, but that's another story. Now, Ms. Bonamici--before I recognize the gentlewoman from Oregon, did you come for the free flying car or did you come-- we only have two left, so we're getting to the end here. Ms. Bonamici. I---- Chairman Smith. The gentlewoman---- Ms. Bonamici. I wish I could say yes, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Smith. The gentlewoman is recognized. Ms. Bonamici. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And my apologies for not being here for your testimony. I was in another committee, which is not nearly as much fun. No one was laughing there. But thank you so much for your testimony, which I have looked through. And I--you know, I frequently hear from my constituents out in northwest Oregon. They complain to us about everything but including traffic. And I hear from communities and businesses and individuals about the need to invest in infrastructure and how we put people back to work and how do we move people, how do we move goods. And my vision for infrastructure isn't just limited to roads and bridges. We need to invest in new transportation policy, new transportation infrastructure from high-speed rail to bicycle pedestrian pathways, and I'm interested in hearing from you about expanding this vision to include urban air mobility. I'm sure it's something that would be quite popular in the Pacific Northwest. One of the things I want to get to also is that I think the workforce in this field is going to need to be innovative and entrepreneurial, and I can tell that from your testimony, which I read. Those characteristics require creative and critical thinking. I also work on a lot of education issues, and I'm the Co-Chair and the founder of the bipartisan STEAM Caucus with Representative Stefanik from New York where we're working on ways that we can educate people who are creative and innovative through integration of arts and design in traditional STEM fields. I want to ask Dr. Clarke, what steps is the aviation research community making to make sure that students get the well-rounded education for the urban air mobility industry, and how--especially how those efforts might change as technology develops? How are you educating, you know, creative critical thinkers? Dr. Clarke. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman. One of the things that we're doing, first of all, is a lot of the universities, including my own, have been changing the curriculum and updating the curriculum over time to include more what would--I would say holistic topics. And the second thing is that we've also been trying to introduce a lot more the idea of innovation and--at the undergraduate level to try to--I was mentioning earlier before you stepped in that I've never seen the level of excitement that it is now amongst aerospace students in particular and the fact that people are out there starting companies or are coming up with ideas and trying to look for investors around new types of vehicles. So from the educational perspective moving beyond just, you know, engineering, science and the ``here's an equation, here's the solution to the equation and that's the end,'' it's thinking about the economic implications, thinking about the regulatory implications, bringing those in. And to credit ABET, which is the accreditation agency, has been pushing that for the last decade or more. And then--but there's definitely an emphasis--I know at Georgia Tech we are trying to make sure that every graduate of Georgia Tech has some thought and has given some thought and has done something around innovation and basically entrepreneurship, which I think goes towards, again, generating jobs and opportunities in the United States. Ms. Bonamici. So that's great to hear. We've had many conversations about how do we educate people today for the jobs that we can't imagine? Dr. Clarke. Right, right. Ms. Bonamici. In your testimony you talk about, all of you, your version for urban air mobility will eventually lead to autonomous vehicles hovering just hundreds of feet above us. I remember in Portland when they built an aerial tram to get from one part of the medical school to another and people who lived underneath it panicked, and of course with the UAV conversation. Can you elaborate on what steps you are taking to protect the privacy of consumers and individuals affected in the surrounding flight path, whoever wants to weigh in on that? Dr. Clarke. Well, I mean, for me I think the steps that need to be taken are pretty straightforward. We don't understand that trade-off between utility and privacy that is inherent in every one of us. I've spent time in the Netherlands, and they have great open windows and--in big--in cities in the Netherlands, and that's when I realized that privacy is a different thing than anonymity, so that's one thing that we have to really understand. And then the second is what's that trade-off that--what are people willing to give up for the utility? That's another thing. I mean, people give up lots of information on their cell phones and stuff because they find it useful, and so that's something that needs to be understood. Once we have that, we can actually start doing modeling and optimizing where we put vertiports, what kind of trajectories need to be put in place, so it's a three-step process, figuring out what people--what that trade-off is, figuring out the models to model it and then optimizing. Ms. Bonamici. In the remaining few seconds, anybody want to weigh in on changes we might need to make as we're considering infrastructure investments? Dr. Allison. So, thank you, Congresswoman, for the question. We think about this very much as multimodal solutions, and so Uber is interested in different modes of transportation and recently introducing bikes on our app. We see Elevate the same way, that this is a type of transit system that will integrate into other things, and it introduces one key feature that is not available right now in most of the transportation system, which is that the cost of building out this type of infrastructure doesn't scale by the--per foot of road you lay or track you lay or tunnel you dig perhaps. It scales with the nodes that you put in, and so it's a nodal- scaling network. So the cost-scaling is very different than the way we think about transportation system and cost-scaling right now, and we think that will be a key feature down the road, so to speak, of how this type of a system integrates into the rest of the transportation system writ large. Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Bonamici. This concludes our hearing today, and I just want to thank all of our expert witnesses for being here and for their testimony. Obviously, this is inspirational and soon to be--we hope--real-time and realistic. And we're going to do something we haven't done before, which is to make a presentation to you all. So if you will stay close to the table, here's the beginning of what we're going to present you. And let me say if you can't take it with you--and that would be totally understandable--we'll figure out a way to get it to you one way or the other, or maybe you can figure that out, too. So I'll come around and hand you the package with the flying car. By the way, the flying car has its wings out as you get it, but the wings actually collapse and fold vertically against the body of the car, and you simply push one button and the wings come out horizontal, and you're off the ground in 15 feet. You can't beat it. I do not get a commission. Actually, I don't know who makes them exactly. Dr. Clarke. Mr. Chairman, I would--Mr. Chairman, you have now introduced a problem in my household because I have twin boys but---- Chairman Smith. Oh, they'll love it. Let's see. The record will remain open for two weeks for additional written comments and written questions from members. And we stand adjourned. [Whereupon, at 11:54 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.] Appendix I ---------- [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] [all]