Category Filtering: 'vertiflite'
At the Paris Air Show, Paris, France-based startup Ascendance Flight Technologies unveiled its Atea hybrid-electric VTOL concept. Atea uses three lift fans powered by electric motors — one in each wing and a fan in the nose of the aircraft — plus a conventional turboprop in the nose. When the aircraft is cruising, the turbine engine charges the batteries for vertical take-offs and landings.
On June 7, New Future Transportation, Inc., (NTF) revealed its eVTOL drive-fly vehicle, ASKA, powered by 14 electric lift fans. ASKA means “flying bird” in Japanese, and NFT said, “it’s the first viable eVTOL vehicle that can both drive on the road and fly autonomously in the sky.” The company unveiled a large 4.9 ft x 8.2 ft (1.5 m x 2.5 m) model of the vehicle at the EcoMotion Event in Tel Aviv, Israel, June 10–13. NFT plans to fly a large (not quite full-scale) unmanned demonstrator vehicle in the first quarter of 2020.
Clark: Originally, there was a Lancair ES, which is a fixed-gear, four-seater aircraft. We thought the path we could go down was to modify that aircraft, apply for an experimental major modification, keep the original air worthiness certificate, and circumnavigate the airworthiness certification. That didn’t work. The FAA put the brakes on it, because we only used the glass, the doors and the very center section of the fuselage. They said it’s a fresh airplane: you have to do an airworthiness certificate.
On May 29, Hopkinton, Massachusetts-based Alaka’i Technologies revealed a “non-flying prototype” of its hydrogen-powered Skai electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. The unveiling was held in Newbury Park, California, at the facilities of BMW-owned global creative consultancy Designworks, which was contracted for the vehicle design, with a focus on the passenger experience.
The third annual Uber Elevate Summit touched down at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC, on June 11-12, 2019 — just one month after the Silicon Valley mobility company raised $8.1 billion when its shares (UBER) started trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Electric/hybrid-electric propulsion enables new vertical flight aircraft configurations that have tremendous potential — but also significant challenges — to bring a radical transformation of air transportation for unmanned package delivery, unmanned logistics, personal air travel, air taxis, urban air mobility (UAM), regional air mobility (RAM) and many other missions.
The $2M GoFly Prize competition has completed its second phase and has so far received more interest than ever imagined. The idea to fund safe and innovative designs for a personal flying machine was a longtime dream for Gwen Lighter and she worked for years to get it started, including getting help from the Vertical Flight Society and other experts (see “AHS Supports GoFly!,” Vertiflite, Nov/Dec 2017).
A VFS panel and other discussions at Heli-Expo provided an opportunity for the commercial helicopter operating community to ask some tough questions about eVTOL technology.
For the second year in a row, the Vertical Flight Society organized a panel discussion at Heli-Expo to brief the civil helicopter industry and operators on electric- and hybrid-electric-powered vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft opportunities and challenges.
Bell and its partners talk about its Nexus eVTOL and the team’s approach to creating a revolutionary new type of aircraft.
As its name suggests, the Bell Nexus hybrid-electric VTOL is all about making connections.
On April 4, the EHang Air Mobility Group, based in Guangzhou, China, and the Austrian FACC aviation company flew media representatives on demonstration flights in the two-seat EHang 216 eVTOL. The flights were conducted in the Generali Arena in Vienna, Austria. EHang is part of the Urban Air Mobility Project — established with FACC and 4GAMECHANGERS / ProSiebenSat.1 PULS 4 — which is intended to be open to others interested in supporting the initiation and operation of eVTOL air taxis in Austria by 2020.
