The past two months have been a turning point in electric-powered transportation.
On March 31, Tesla Motors unveiled the all-electric Tesla Model 3 five-seat compact sedan, starting at a base price of $35,000. Tesla, which shipped 50,000 cars worldwide in 2015, expects to sell more than 80,000 in 2016, but the first Model 3 cars aren’t expected to arrive until the end of 2017.
Karlsruhe, Germany-based e-volo GmbH conducted the first flight of its VC200 Volocopter on March 30 at nearby Bruchsal Airfield. After receiving its “Permit to Fly” as an ultralight aircraft in February, e-volo called its VC200 “the world’s first certified Multicopter.”
What if you could cut your daily commute time from 35 minutes to 12 minutes? How much of a bigger home would you buy if you could commute 100 miles to work and still get there in less than 35 minutes? What if this type of capability was cost-competitive to driving, taking the train or bus?
These questions have compelled a group of scientists, engineers and visionaries in industry, government and academia to meet once a year to tackle the technical, regulatory and perception challenges of democratized vertical flight.
Hayward, California is the San Francisco Bay area headquarters of Elytron Aircraft LLC, owned by Oliver Garrow and Gregory Bruell, who both have backgrounds in computer software design and engineering. Previously, Garrow Aircraft invented the innovative and unique Verticopter concept developing the design over a period of 10 years until the construction of the prototype. Garrow Aircraft created Elytron in 2013 for research into combining the advantages of fixed and rotary wing flight.
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Despite more than 70 years of vertical flight development, there are only three operational types of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft today: helicopters, the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor and the AV-8B Harrier jump jet. It could be argued that VTOL aircraft went through its period of rapid experimentation, and like commercial transports, settled on the configuration that offered the best approach.
AHS International held a groundbreaking event on August 27-29. The “Transformative Vertical Flight Concepts Joint Workshop on Enabling New Flight Concepts through Novel Propulsion and Energy Architectures” was held in Arlington, Virginia at the offices of CENTRA Technology, Inc. and with the support of the F.N. Piasecki Foundation. The workshop was co-sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
The past decade or so has seen an incredible infusion of innovative technologies into the vertical flight industry, but regulatory guidance has not kept pace. Between tiltrotors, iPads, drones, innovative new approaches to vertical flight, and conventional helicopter enhancements, regulatory agencies such as the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) have not developed timely, consistent guidance that can facilitate the safe implementation of new technologies for vertical flight in today’s demanding marketplace.
AgustaWestland stunned the world on March 4, 2013 when it announced at Heli-Expo that it had secretly flown an unconventional technology demonstrator aircraft, codenamed “Project Zero,” that looks unlike any aircraft before. The long list of disruptive innovations demonstrated and pioneered by Project Zero were just as stunning as the aircraft itself.
The advent of high power density batteries has prompted the emergence of highly efficient electric powertrains now flying on light fixed-wing aircraft. Rotary-wing aircraft, with one of the highest power demands in the aviation world, has been left outside of the electric realm. Designing a 100% electrically-powered manned helicopter is a highly challenging exercise and hasn’t been successfully attempted until today.
