Category Filtering: 'vertiflite'
Rolls-Royce announced on March 14 that the company had conducted successful ground tests of a hybrid system using the company’s ubiquitous M250 gas turbine. The company said that it successfully tested the hybrid version of the M250 gas turbine in a ground demonstration setting in three operating modes: series hybrid, parallel hybrid and turbo-electric.
Airbus revealed photos of its completed but unpainted unmanned CityAirbus at Heli-Expo on March 5, followed by an official unveiling of the demonstrator in Ingolstadt, Germany, on March 11. Developed about 35 miles (60 km) away at the company’s Donauwörth, Germany, plant, the aircraft will be tested at the Ingolstadt Manching Airport.
AutoFlightX GmbH, based near Munich, Germany, unveiled its full-sized V600 prototype on April 10, 2019, at the AERO Friedrichshafen 2019 aviation trade show. The two-place, all-electric AutoFlightX V600 has six propellers for lift fitted on two booms parallel to the fuselage and a pusher propeller in the rear for forward flight.
For many entrants in the race to develop electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, the speculative air taxi market is the prize at the end of the finish line — one that could someday yield orders for thousands of aircraft to ferry millions of passengers around congested cities. However, with numerous regulatory and social barriers standing in the way of that market — on top of the very real technological challenges associated with building and flying eVTOL aircraft — this type of on-demand urban air mobility (UAM) could take many years to come to fruition.
Austin, Texas-based LIFT Aircraft revealed itself on Dec. 11, 2018. The LIFT Hexa is an all-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) single-passenger wingless multicopter aimed primarily at tourism and short distance travel. It completed its first manned test flight on Nov. 1, 2018.
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the world’s largest assembly of the latest and greatest consumer technology from around the world — from phones and TVs, to drones, cars and, yes, even electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft and a yacht — kicked off in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Jan. 8–11, 2019.
The sell-out 8th Biennial Autonomous VTOL Technical Meeting & 6th Annual Electric VTOL Symposium was a phenomenal success, with some 375 attendees. A series of articles in this issue of Vertiflite highlight the news and announcements from this event.
On Feb. 7, Eric Fanning, the President and CEO of Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) testified in a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing entitled, “The Cost of Doing Nothing: Why Investing in our Nation’s Infrastructure Cannot Wait.” In his remarks, Fanning spoke extensively of the potential of UAM.
What will urban air mobility (UAM) look like in the near future? How will electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft share airspace with helicopters, traditional airplanes, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and other unknown proposed aircraft such as personal air vehicles and personal flying devices? These are some of the questions that Airbus’s Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) Blueprint tries to answer.
Volocopter GmbH and Fraport AG (the manager of Frankfurt Airport) are developing concepts for ground infrastructure and operations required for air taxi services at airports. This cooperation focuses on smooth passenger handling and efficient integration into existing transport infrastructure. In the future, Voloports could link existing urban transportation junctions with one another and provide connections to and from Frankfurt Airport.
