Hyundai Motor Company and Uber Elevate showed us a fairly complete urban air mobility (UAM) electric vertical takeoff & landing (eVTOL) concept vehicle, autonomous pods, and a hub ecosystem that fits with Uber Elevate’s air taxi model at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2020.
Aviation Safety Resources (ASR) — a leading parachute safety company that won one of Revolution.Aero’s competitions earlier this year — says it has a parachute system that will work with eVTOL aircraft, even at low altitudes. I recently spoke with Larry Williams, CEO of ASR, on how the company’s parachute technology works, its application for eVTOL aircraft, and public perception.
The Tesla Cybertruck may be “old news” by now (ah, the not-so-endearing ADD of the internet), but a piece of ours explaining why it doesn’t really need a garage was still king of the hill last month. Tesla took silver too, with a story explaining that the 2012 Tesla Model S still has superior specs to new 2020 EV entrants from other companies than Tesla. In third was a piece on world-leading research from our friend Mark Z. Jacobson and several colleagues on how the world could be a galaxy-leading 100% renewable energy planet!
The Earth is rapidly approaching 1.5°C global warming, air pollution kills over 7 million people worldwide each year, and diminishing fossil fuel resources portend social instability. Yet, recently, world leaders at the United Nations Madrid climate talks failed to agree on a path forward. The core of the problem is the belief by some leaders that solving global warming will be expensive and drain the economy of their country. However, new research indicates that this belief is incorrect.
Here’s more urban air mobility (UAM) electric vertical takeoff & landing (eVTOL) and electric fixed-wing aircraft news for the last week of 2019.
2019 is drawing to a close, so let’s take stock of a decade of green mobility progress that started with a handful of startups a decade ago.
A small glimpse into the future of efficient transportation comes from an unexpected source: a new supercar concept. In short, the car uses a powerful electric fan at the rear, pulling air through ducting to increase the vehicle’s performance in several ways.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, aviation is not only undergoing its third revolution, with electricity this time, but history was made on Tuesday, December 10, in Vancouver, Canada, when Harbour Air took off in a seaplane using electricity. The maiden electric seaplane flight is a sweet wink at commercial aviation history, which started with seaplanes.
Predicting the future use of airspace — not knowing how it will be used, what types of aircraft will be made, and how to manage it safely — is hair raising to most. Major companies like Airbus and Dassault Systèmes, among others, are simulating our unknown electric air mobility future. But what does the future really hold?
The Munich-based aviation startup Lilium Jet has been busy and recently released a video of its successful 3-minute test flight on October 1st. Lilium tested controllability with banked turns in transition flight needed before certification and commercialization.
