You have to hand it to the electric vehicle (EV) movement, because the open gates of creativity never cease to impress us. Case in point, these few examples of good old zany thinking and applying today’s technology to answer today’s needs.
A flying Porsche? Yes, you are right, although a little different than what might occur at first. Porsche announced it is looking into designing a human-carrying flying drone. And in order to do that, it needs to put a few ducks in a row.
About three months ago, we reported that Airbus was moving ahead with its electric aircraft project called Vahana. The company announced more good news after the procedural test flight a few weeks ago.
The German vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) company Lilium just won the “Early Stage Company of the Year” Global CleanTech 100 award, which is recognizing their early work on electric aircraft mobility and potential leadership for initial market share.
A prototype of a new unmanned and electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) cargo air vehicle (CAV) design has just been shown off by Boeing — with the idea being for the new prototype to serve as a test vehicle for the company’s autonomous operation tech.
Uber has hired Celina Mikolajczak, formerly a senior battery engineer at Tesla, to work on advanced battery technologies for its flying taxi program. It expects to begin service in Dubai, Dallas, and Los Angeles in a few years.
There is something going on at Workhorse, and its latest press release hints at what the company is trying to do. After the announcement of its newest electric vehicle (EV) van, it is now announcing that the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has given it a green light to fly its electric helicopter, the SureFly Electric Hybrid Helicopter.
Short of the revolutionary Burt Rotan wild aircraft designs, airplanes have changed little over the past decades. Winged-cylinder with a propulsion system is how we travel through the air. Unless you have the astronomical budget the military enjoys to design hypersonic aircraft, not for the general public, the choice is simple — airplanes or helicopters. Delorean Aerospace just announced that its DR7 should fly by the end of 2018. That would shake things up, but is it practical, viable, for real?
2017 was a strange year, with plenty to celebrate and plenty to ponder about. The wild ups and downs most of us have gone through, both personally and professionally, were reflected in the industries we cover as well. So let’s take a look at what surprised us, what shows the most potential, and what was simply strange.
Nope, we will not stop writing about vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drones, because … well, because they are increasingly becoming an everyday fact of our lives. And they make such great Christmas presents, don’t they?
