If you are an urban planner or policy maker engaged with urban air mobility, be aware that the bloom is distinctly off this rose, cut your losses, and pivot to regional air mobility.
Simplicity is the silver bullet of electric rotorcraft.
There’s a deep disconnect between the purported urban taxi business models and most of the graphics these eVTOL companies use, which hides a yawning chasm of reality.
Santa Cruz-based Joby Aviation has been quietly working on its tilt-rotor eVTOL air taxi for over a decade now, but seems to have taken a big step forward after going public via a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, called Reinvent Technology Partners. That deal results … [continued]
The mentalists at Australian flying-car company Alauda recently showed off the third version of their highly anticipated Airspeeder eVTOL (dubbed “Mk3”). That alone would be newsworthy, but it’s the second part of Alauda’s announcement that’s more impressive — that’s not the part where the company plans some RC-style remote flying … [continued]
The CityHawk is much more than a few concept drawings. The vehicle has been in development since the company’s inception in 2001, and an unmanned version of the CityHawk has been flying successfully for at least a year.
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.
January is always a tough month for us, with CES kicking off less than a week after New Year’s Eve, and now the Transformative Vertical Flight 2020 Conference is two weeks later.
We finally heard about Kitty Hawk’s “secret project,” which sports the strange name of Heaviside. It introduces the notion of range for an electric vertical take-off & landing (eVTOL) aircraft. The demonstration of the aircraft flying is fantastic but I wonder if we’re about to witness another “range anxiety” war between eVTOL manufacturers? Let’s hope not.
The Embraer fixed-wing, single-engine electric demonstrator aircraft might not look like your vision of our urban air mobility (UAM) future, but its electric conventional takeoff & landing (eCTOL) design makes it a perfect testbed. Let’s look at what Embraer is testing with the single-wing eCTOL.
