Category Filtering: 'vertiflite'
The Chinese drone company, EHang, revealed in July that its EHang 184 eVTOL conducted numerous tests for Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), and that many passengers had been flown to date in China and Dubai.
Bruchsal, Germany-based Volocopter (previously known as “e-volo GmbH”) has continued its series of stunning announcements. The company, which made the world’s first manned multicopter flight in March 2016 with its VC200 eVTOL demonstrator, is preparing to fly its next aircraft, the pre-series 2X multicopter. The first 2X is complete and the second 2X is in fabrication.
Airbus Helicopters has unveiled more information about their CityAirbus quad duct electric VTOL. CityAirbus is a multi-passenger, self-piloted eVTOL demonstrator “designed for urban air mobility with cost efficiency, high-volume production and a low environmental footprint in mind.”
A3 by Airbus Group, the company’s Silicon Valley outpost, is independently developing another eVTOL concept. The single-seat, self-piloted Vahana eVTOL uses four electric propellers each on its canard and aft wing.
Since the release of the Uber Elevate white paper in October 2016, the San Francisco-based ride-sharing technology company has charged forward, widely sharing its vision of a revolutionary urban on-demand air network with a wide range of aerospace, municipal, real estate, financial, regulatory and other stakeholders.
A confluence of technical, business and societal developments in recent years is driving an expectation that air transportation will be transformed to cut urban daily commute times dramatically, enable faster emergency response, and allow inter- and intra-city transportation at costs competitive to traveling by car, bus or train.
The US Army’s quest for autonomous reconnaissance aircraft that could fit in the palm of a soldier’s hand has led to a breakthrough in vertical lift technology by researchers utilizing a concept long-known but never successfully demonstrated: the cyclocopter.
The UKi Future of Transportation World Conference was held 5-6 July in Cologne, Germany. The session on "Getting Transportation Off the Ground" focused on how electric VTOL and "personal airborne transportation systems (PATS) will shake up personal transportation before 2030.
Serious progress is being made around the world in eVTOL development. Here is a roundup of recent news that has come out since the detailed article in the last issue of Vertiflite.
Airbus Decides to Pop Up
Airbus XO, the company’s innovation group, revealed a concept for “seamless, multi-modal, fully electric urban mobility.”
The Elevate Summit, a conference to promote the air taxi concept, hosted in Dallas, Texas, April 25–27, by cell phone ride-paging service Uber, attracted advocates and expert speakers from nearly every industry and regulatory agency with a role to play in turning the eVTOL dream into reality.
