Calling itself “The first electric Short Take Off and Landing (eSTOL) aircraft for middle-mile logistics,” Airflow came out of stealth on June 10. The company, headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, was founded in 2019 by a team who worked together on the now-defunct Airbus Vahana program.
Slovenia’s Pipistrel has received a Type Certification from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) for its Velis Electro, a full-electric derivative of its proven Virus SW 121. The company said the Velis Electro is the world’s first electric-powered airplane to receive a Type Certificate (EASA.A.573 TCDS, dated May 18, 2020).
Deli Zhao, a radio-controlled aircraft model and small drone producer in Guangdong Province, China, flew a one-seat eVTOL “flying motorcycle” in June 2018 — followed by a two-seat “flying bathtub” concept more recently — which attracted millions of dollars of venture capital funds from Chinese investors.
EHang has been developing a human-passenger electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft along with drones for many years (see “How EHang Build an eVTOL for the World,” Vertiflite, July/Aug 2020). Few aviation startups are poised to take advantage of manned and unmanned urban air mobility (UAM) as EHang.
SkyDrive Inc. (head office: Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo; Tomohiro Fukuzawa CEO announced today that it had completed a ¥3.9 billion Series B fundraising through the allocation of new shares to 10 investors, including Development Bank of Japan Inc. SkyDrive, a world-leading developer of urban air mobility solutions, is a budding maker of flying cars and heavy-load-specific industrial cargo drones.
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SkyDrive Inc., a world-leading developer of urban air mobility solutions, is proud to announce that it conducted a public demonstration flight of its new SD-03 flying car model on August 25, 2020. It was the first public demonstration of a flying car in Japan. The flight took place at the 10,000-square-meter (approximately 2.5-acre) Toyota Test Field, which is one of the largest test fields in Japan and home to the company’s development base.
The senior leadership of the United States Air Force witnessed their first flight of an electric powered VTOL aircraft on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2020, when LIFT Aircraft gave a demonstration of its single-seat HEXA aircraft on the parade ground of Camp Mabry near downtown Austin, Texas.
On Aug. 20, 2020, the three top leaders of the United States Air Force had their first opportunity to see an electric powered vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft in flight during a visit to headquarters of the Air Force’s innovation hub, AFWERX, in Austin, Texas.
On Aug. 14, 2020, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released its FY 2022 Administration Research and Development Budget Priorities policy memorandum. Like last year's memo, eVTOL is again highlighted as a research priority. This 10-page memorandum (M-20-29) emphasizes programs the Administration sees as priorities as agencies develop their fiscal year 2022 budget proposals.
VFS corporate member Happy Takeoff published a 32-page white paper on Aug. 7, 2020 entitled, "Captive-Use Hydrogen For Advanced Air Mobility." Hydrogen has much greater energy density than batteries, and so holds incredible promise for electric VTOL aircraft in the future.
