Jaunt Air Mobility has selected additional partners for its Reduced Rotor Operating Speed Aircraft (ROSA™) electric rotorcraft. BAE Systems is collaborating with the company to explore the development of electric energy management systems for UAM vehicles through a memorandum of understanding (MOU).
On Dec. 10, Harbour Air, North America’s largest seaplane airline conducted a successful flight of what is claimed was “the world’s first all-electric commercial aircraft.”
John Deere and Volocopter GmbH are collaborating on a heavy-lift utility drone for agriculture. A demonstrator model of the VoloDrone equipped with a John Deere crop protection sprayer, which had made tethered flights, was presented on Nov. 10–16 in Hanover, Germany, at the AGRITECHNICA trade show. With a potential payload of 440 lb (200 kg) and a maximum range of 25 miles (40 km), Volcopter said “the VoloDrone is able to cover an enormous area, especially under difficult operating conditions.”
LAS VEGAS, January 6, 2020 – Uber and Hyundai Motor Company have today announced a new partnership to develop Uber Air Taxis for a future aerial ride share network and unveiled a new full-scale aircraft concept at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
Vertiflite contributor Elan Head was one of a select few journalists to attend TexasUP, held Nov. 19-21, on Ross Perot, Jr.’s Circle T Ranch near Fort Worth, Texas. This third annual summit of investors and developers was organized by JetAviva co-founders Cyrus Sigari and Ben Marcus, who is also the co-founder and chairman of drone traffic management company, AirMap. With about 160 attendees, Sigari estimated that they represented over $100B of investable capital.
On Nov. 18, Bell announced that its Autonomous Pod Transport (APT) 70 had conducted additional envelope expansion, with a 60-lb (27.2-kg) payload in tow.
The Vahana unmanned eVTOL demonstrator made its last flight on Nov. 14. The aircraft completed 138 flights totaling almost 500 nm (925 km) and over 13 hours of flight time at the Eastern Oregon Regional Airport in Pendleton, Oregon. Airbus’s Silicon Valley business unit A3 made the first test flight on Jan. 31, 2018. The Vahana is a full-scale prototype, self-piloting, eight-prop tilt wing, all-electric VTOL vehicle.
In May 2019, Luminati Aerospace exhibited a vintage Gyrodyne XRON-1 Rotorcycle coaxial helicopter at the VFS Forum 75 in Philadelphia equipped with a small electric motor to power the pair of 20-ft (6-m) diameter rotor blades.
A Maryland startup has combined a 90-year-old aircraft design that was ahead of its time with the latest breakthroughs in composite materials, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and an innovative tilt-wing configuration to develop an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) flying taxi that could navigate high-rise urban landscapes.
If German electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft developer Lilium GmbH had a theme song, it might be the Fleetwood Mac classic, “Go Your Own Way.” More than 150 companies worldwide, most of them startups, are pursuing the tantalizing vision of a multibillion-dollar eVTOL market, but Lilium’s aircraft design and business model go in drastically different directions from most of the rest.
