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Bell filed for a patent entitled “Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) Aircraft” on Jan. 2, 2018, and it was published July 26, 2018. Aviation Week’s Graham Warwick noted (in "Does Patent Application Reveal Bell’s eVTOL Design?, The Weekly Of Business Aviation, Aug. 13, 2018) that it “may provide clues to Bell’s design for [its eVTOL] air taxi.”
Florida-based VerdeGo Aero has refocused its efforts from developing its PAT200 tandem tiltwing eVTOL aircraft towards developing powertrain and controls solutions. The company announced on Aug. 1 that it was launching its Integrated Distributed Electric Propulsion (IDEP) systems to be a supplier for other eVTOL developers.
The CAFE Foundation held its 2018 Electric Aircraft Symposium at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh's Alumni Welcome and Conference Center on Saturday and Sunday July 21-22, 2018, in conjunction with the Experimental Aircraft Association's AirVenture at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, USA. The title of the CAFE EAS was "The Future of Flight: Electric Aviation Technologies and Opportunities."
A number of eVTOL aircraft were on display at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, USA, in July 2018. Ken Swartz, VFS Board Member and President of Aeromedia Communications, took lots of photos and made a presentation on The Electric VTOL Revolution (8 MB pdf) on July 25 as part of the EAA Forums.
The Electric VTOL News™ now has more than 100 aircraft cataloged in the most extensive directory of electric and hybrid-electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft in the world. Launched in April 2017 after the first Uber Elevate Summit, the directory grew at a rate of about one aircraft per week during the first year, but this has now accelerated to an average rate of two aircraft per week as more aircraft are unveiled and new actors join The Electric VTOL Revolution.
The Vertical Flight Society now has more than 25 hours of online videos related to electric VTOL aircraft and technology.
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Subscribe to the VFS YouTube Channel at www.youtube.com/VTOLsociety for the latest news and educational videos on vertical flight, including:
Vertical Flight Society Executive Director Mike Hirschberg provided an overview of eVTOL promise and progress in a briefing, "The Electric VTOL Revolution," to the VFS San Francisco Bay Area Chapter on July 2, 2018. More than 100 people attended, including dozens of NASA Rotorcraft Aeromechanics interns from around the United States.
On Nov. 8, 2017, The Boeing Company acquired Aurora Flight Sciences, which bills itself as “an innovative technology company which strives to create smarter aircraft through the development of versatile and intuitive autonomous systems.” Or to put it another way, a company whose entire existence is thinking outside the box.
For those who knew to look for it as something potentially revolutionary — rather than some crazy idea for a far-away future — electric VTOL almost broke into the mainstream this year. On Monday, Feb. 26, the day before Heli-Expo began, AHS Executive Director Mike Hirschberg gave a press briefing, entitled, “The Future of Vertical Flight,” providing a perspective on the global vertical flight market and technological development, including the potential of eVTOL.
On March 12, Kitty Hawk revealed its latest surprise: Cora. After nearly eight years of secretive electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft development, the Mountain View, California-based company backed by Google co-founder Larry Page finally went public. With the hashtag #MeetCora, Kitty Hawk announced that it had been flying a two-seat derivative of the Zee Aero Z-P2 (see “Electric VTOL News,” Vertiflite March/April 2018) in California and in New Zealand. The company also announced that it had established Zephyr Airworks, the operator of Cora in New Zealand.
