In February 2018, EHANG — a major player in the quadcopter market — revealed a new version of its 184 eVTOL drone with two-seats and twice as many arms and propellers. The new version can carry a total payload of up to 620 lb (280 kg). The company had unveiled the original 184, whose name means “1 passenger, 8 propellers, 4 arms”, in January 2016 at the Consumer Electronics Show.
The American company HopFlyt began hovering tests of its Venturi one-seventh scale model in its hangar in Lusby, Maryland, in December. The Venturi pairs variable incidence, tandem channel wings with eight counter-rotating propellers within the channels that can generate very high levels of static thrust and lift while reducing propeller noise.
Bratislava, Slovakia-based AeroMobil s.r.o. was founded in 2010 to develop vehicles that can convert from street-legal automobiles to aircraft, though the AeroMobil design has been in development since 1990. The company flew its 3.0 short takeoff and landing (STOL) design in 2013 and announced its 4.0 production model in April 2017, capable of STOL operations from 650 ft (200 m) grass strips; the company is currently taking pre-orders for the vehicle.
On March 7, 2018, Zurich, Switzerland-based Dufour Aerospace announced the development of its latest aircraft, the aEro 2. Building on the success of its aEro 1 fully-electric aerobatic plane — which first flew in June 2016 — the aEro 2 is a modular hybrid-electric VTOL.
The US Helicopter Safety Team has held an Infrastructure Summit annually since February 2016; the last two featured presentations on the Uber Elevate ecosystem plans. Both presentations are now available online.
AHS International Executive Director Mike Hirschberg hosted a panel discussing the promise, progress and challenges of electric VTOL aircraft development. More than 50 companies are currently developing eVTOL aircraft (see the AHS website, www.eVTOL.news), with several in advanced stages of flight testing. Industry experts expect these new products to enter the market in the next 5-10 years, and expand the operational opportunities for rotorcraft operators, due to their extremely low noise and low operating costs.
A packed house at January’s AHS International Transformative Vertical Flight Technical Meeting and Fifth Annual Workshop learned about bold visions for urban air taxis and the challenges of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL). Four days of presentations hosted by the AHS San Francisco Bay Area Chapter covered aeromechanics, propulsion, acoustics, infrastructure and certification advances aimed largely at airborne mass transit. The new rotorcraft suggested for moving people over clogged streets include multicopters, tiltrotors, tilt wings and ducted fans, nearly all designed around Distributed Electric Propulsion (DEP). AHS International executive director and workshop program chair Mike Hirschberg observed, “Really, transformative flight is [largely] about DEP and the design freedom that it enables.”
AHS International's 5th Annual Transformative Vertical Flight Workshop, held in Jan. 2018 in San Francisco, California, featured the latest advances and possibilities in urban air mobility. Videos and presentations for the workshop are now available for download: www.vtol.org/TVF-2018
Vahana, the all-electric VTOL aircraft from A³ by Airbus, made its first full-scale flight on Jan. 31, 2018, at the Pendleton UAS Range in Pendleton, Oregon. The first untethered flight of the unmanned, fully self-piloted electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) demonstrator was a 53-second hover at 16 ft (5 m). A³ completed a second flight of the first demonstrator, dubbed “Alpha One,” the following day with representatives from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Joby Aviation, Inc., which went silent in late 2016 shortly after telling Vertiflite that it would fly in early 2017 (“The Demand for On-Demand Mobility, Vertiflite, Jan./Feb. 2017), revealed on Feb. 1, 2018 that it is well advanced in its flight testing of its four-seat S4. Although the company has still not revealed any images of the S4 since the AHS-led 2nd Transformative Vertical Flight Workshop in August 2015 (shown), the company officially announced on Feb. 1 that it has been flying the eVTOL aircraft and that it is “now developing a commercial version of that design and preparing that vehicle for certification.”
