D3 Technologies, the German start-up promising solutions to the urban air mobility (UAM) sector’s air traffic management (ATM) challenges, has raised €2.9 million ($3.5 million) in a Seed II funding round. The fresh capital has been provided by investors including Vector Venture Capital, SEK Ventures, EIT KIC Urban Mobility (part of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology), and Mutschler Ventures.
The company says it expects to start a pilot application for its proposed system in June or July of 2021 by equipping one or two airports in the Munich area and operating some trial operations with test vehicles. It will likely start with a fairly large drone but may also use an existing light aircraft. The integrated ATM package consists of a ground station, communications equipment, and on-board avionics (which the company refers to as a "blue box").
D3 expects to be ready to expand the pilot application to a larger regional area by 2022. It anticipates that commercial passenger-carrying operations by eVTOL aircraft will start in 2024 and says it can be ready to support these.
The company claims its ATM concept is unique in consisting of an integrated air-ground system that automatically provides air routes to aircraft to fly their preferred routes. The airborne component will allow the air vehicle to stay on its assigned route, and will automatically receive updates from the ground segment on other air traffic, airspace availability, and obstacles to ensure conflict-free routes.
According to CEO Corvin Huber, D3 is now bidding to provide support for planned UAM early-adopter programs in locations such as the Canadian city of Vancouver, Paris, Norway, and Spain. He told FutureFlight that the company's technology is primarily intended to support passenger-carrying flights in larger, eventually autonomous, eVTOL aircraft and that the safety-critical ATM support it provides can be scaled down for use in smaller aircraft. “This involves a transition from crewed to uncrewed flight, and this transition is part of the roadmap for our technology,” he explained.
The business model for what D3 is offering to the UAM sector is somewhat complicated. The company sees a number of “gate-keepers” that will be part of the decision-making chain for implementing ATM but not all of them will be direct customers. This will likely include aircraft manufacturers, aircraft operators, airports, city leaders, and agencies like EASA.
Huber said that D3 will likely end up charging for service provision rather than simply selling the hardware and software, probably using some sort of pay-by-mile formula. He said that D3’s original and new investors fully accept that it will be several years before a sustainable revenue stream is established.
“In 10 to 15 years, there will be so much traffic over urban areas that solutions as defined today will not be sufficient,” commented Vector Venture Capital managing director Uwe Gerlinger. “We believe that a highly automated traffic management system is necessary to enable aircraft of the future to share rather small and crowded airspace. We are investing in D3 because the start-up sees the bigger picture.”
“We’re not claiming that we’re the only ones who can do what we’re doing,” Huber told FutureFlight. “We are seeing people producing things like Lidar sensors and radar sensors, but we have not seen a single system that is completely answerable for traffic safety, that manages all aspects of safety and takes responsibility for it. We will be the first to integrate all the necessary systems and be responsible for how they all work together in flight.”
In a recently published white paper, D3 predicted that operations by new eVTOL aircraft in and around major metropolitan areas will reach an inflection point amounting to thousands of daily movements between 2026 and 2028. The company estimates that at that point, annual revenues from air traffic control services from operations across three metropolitan areas could amount to at least €110 million.
The start-up argues that existing air traffic control service providers will not be able to cope with the volume of activity expected from UAM. In its view, it will not be sufficient for the emerging passenger-carrying UAM sector to simply adopt technology and processes developed for existing unmanned aircraft system traffic management (UTM).
D3 was founded in July 2019 with the initial seed backing from investors including Riedel Communications and Previdus as well as individuals such as Christian Lindener, who is the global head of Airbus Bizlabs. It plans to launch another investment round at the end of 2021.
The D3 leadership team has extensive aviation experience, under the direction of Huber as CEO and chief technology officer. He previously ran German aircraft manufacturers Extra, Remos, and Econoflug. The company’s head of air traffic control is Ralph Schuppenhauer, who was program manager for next-generation air traffic management with German ATC agency Deutsche Flugsicherung, and its head of avionics is Otto Bommer, who was formerly program manager for the Airbus 400M aircraft’s mission management computer.
“For urban air traffic to be able to carry passengers, a paradigm shift in air traffic management is needed,” Huber stated. “With D3 Technologies, we are developing a rule-based method for handling man-carrying urban traffic, suggesting a system architecture that follows the required rules and making a suggestion for means of compliance.”
