WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

One day aircraft will literally fly themselves autonomously, and Airbus is gathering all the data it needs to accelerate that future vision.

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A couple of years ago Airbus flew a prototype of their first fully autonomous commercial airliner the A320NEO in Paris, and now in efforts to advance automation in commercial aviation, the aircraft manufacturer’s Acubed innovation unit in Silicon Valley has now collected data on more than 100 airports across the US. The massive data collection campaign, which began in California in 2019 and expanded to the eastern US last year, will help the company to enable autonomous flight through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning, according to the Europe-based aerospace group.

Over four months, Acubed flew its so-called flight test lab aircraft – a Beechcraft Baron 58 modified with cameras and sensors – to more than 100 airports across the country in various weather and lighting conditions. At each airport, the experimental aircraft collected copious amounts of imagery that the Acubed team is using to train and test machine-learning algorithms.

Using the real-world data collected during the campaign, the Acubed team can also generate synthetic datasets to create a more robust data pool for the machine-learning algorithms to assimilate.

The Future of Aviation, by keynote speaker Matthew Griffin

“To go collect the data to the level that we need for each airport would be impossible,” said Paul Smith, Acubed’s director of flight test operations. By combining synthetic data with real-world data, researchers can simulate a wider variety of conditions and scenarios, such as obstacles on a runway.

“We have two challenges,” Smith said. “One is to build the synthetic data and the other is to prove that the synthetic data we build will replicate real life in the models we are running. So what we’re doing is taking the real data that we collect in the airplane and comparing it to the synthetic data in enough cases for a regulator to find acceptable.”

To decide which airports to include in the data collection campaign, the Acubed team looked at airports in the US where the Airbus A320 airliner operates. The A320 is the highest-selling single-aisle airliner, with more than 10,000 aircraft currently in service around the world. Airbus intends to give airliners such as the A320 family the capability to taxi, take off, and land autonomously, thereby reducing pilot workload while improving operational efficiency and safety.

“One hundred airports symbolize so much more than meets the eye. It stands for over 5 million images that will be funnelled through our machine learning development pipeline to develop and test the robustness of our algorithms,” said Cedric Cocaud, chief engineer of Acubed’s Wayfinder group, which is overseeing the data project.

In addition to autonomous flight control systems, Airbus is applying its AI research to air traffic control and ground operations at airports. In September Acubed entered into a memorandum of understanding with Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) to explore how AI and machine learning can make ground operations safer, more efficient, and more sustainable.

Acubed led early efforts by Airbus to explore options for developing new eVTOL aircraft, through its work on the Vahana technology demonstrator conducted in tandem with the CityAirbus program at its sister company Airbus Helicopters. Airbus is since committed to developing the four-passenger CityAirbus NextGen aircraft that it aims to start flight testing later this year.

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WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Aircraft are increasingly hitting what’s known as clear air turbulence which pilots can’t detect, this innovation reduces the dangers of turbulence.

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Noone likes turbulence – whether it’s the kind that pilots can detect or the invisible kind that they can’t, called “Clear Air Turbulence.” And now Austrian company Turbulence Solutions claims it’s already flight-testing a system that can detect and neutralize air turbulence, reducing the forces felt by passengers by up to 80% – and reducing fuel burn by up to 10%. It’s set to launch in 2024.

Nobody likes to fly through turbulence – which is tough luck, because climate change has already caused it to increase by as much as 55% on some popular routes, and it’s projected to continue getting worse as temperatures rise, bringing wind speeds and thus wind shear along with them.

The Future of Aviation Safety, by Keynote Matthew Griffin

Where it can be accurately predicted, airliners will often go out of their way to go around it, hoping to avoid a whole lot of passenger distress as well as showers of vomit. But in clear air, it’s nigh on impossible to spot turbulence until you’re in the middle of it, guts in your throat and praying for a quick death.

Enter Turbulence Solutions, which claims to have built and tested something that solves the problem, acting a little like an active noise cancellation system in a pair of headphones. Effectively, it detects turbulence just before it happens, and uses super-quick automated lift adjustment through the aircraft’s control surfaces to generate forces in opposition to the turbulence.

To predict what’s about to hit the wings, the system uses 5-hole differential air pressure probes, mounted as far forward as possible. On the unmanned testbed above, for example, the company placed a pair of lightweight rails on front of the aircraft, holding up a third rail with the pressure sensors held out nearly as far as the wing tips.

See it in action

On the manned test aircraft, the sensors were instead mounted directly to the wings, on long pole masts that placed them some 2.65 m (8.69 ft) forward of the leading edges. At cruise speed, that’s enough to give the system a tenth of a second’s worth of advance warning before turbulence hits – and according to a paper published by the CEAS Aeronautical Journal in 2021, the system was able to predict vertical accelerations greater than 30 m/sec/sec with an accuracy of nearly 62% on its very first test flight, and it’s doubtless improved since then.

Armed with this information, the flight control system now has a tenth of a second to generate a force-cancelling response at each wing, by deftly actuating low-inertia lift surfaces. In this way, the system is able to iron out vertical accelerations, pitch and roll changes, and wing bending moments. The Turbulence Solutions team claims it currently cuts down the effects of turbulence in the cabin by around 80%.

You can see the system going bonkers to smooth out a bumpy manned test flight in the video above.

In an interview with Interesting Engineering, a company representative said it also enables significant fuel savings of up to 10%, since aircraft no longer need to climb, dive, or route around turbulence, and that’s nothing to sniff at.

The company says it’ll have a system commercially available for light aircraft in 2024. It’s looking into a version for eVTOL air taxis by 2026, and hoping to have a system relevant to commercial airliners by 2030. Godspeed, team, the world’s airline passengers – not to mention cleaning crews – need you to succeed.

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WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Flying cars seem to be a way off still but eVTOL aircraft are popping up everywhere so companies are working on ever better propulsion systems for them.

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A fascinating eVTOL project is about to come out of stealth showcasing a “breakthrough HyperDrive propulsion technology” that MagLev Aero claims is “dramatically more quiet, efficient, safe, sustainable and emotionally appealing to the mass market” than today’s competitors.

Representatives from the Boston-based company have made their way to the Paris Air Show, where they’re preparing to reveal a very different approach to electric vertical lift aircraft, drawing on the magnetic levitation technology used in high-speed trains.

What we appear to have here is an annular lift fan arrangement. The aircraft’s cabin appears to be surrounded by a huge ring-shaped duct, into which at least one large-diameter, many-bladed fan is mounted.

This circular rotor is kept frictionlessly separated from its enclosure using permanent magnets, so it’s free to spin when driven. It’s driven by a series of distributed, redundant electromagnetic propulsors around the rim.

The benefits here are clear: big fans with low disc loading are highly efficient, and can generate useful levels of lift at relatively low speeds. This will help keep the noise down, particularly since they’re surrounded by ducts, and should stretch the hover time available from a battery compared to a smaller-fan design. Without having yet seen the presentation, we may as well now wander off into the realm of wild speculation.

I’d be surprised if it’s just a single annular fan; it seems more likely to me that there are two in there, set to counter-rotate. That’d give it a healthy dollop of additional thrust, some vertical lift redundancy, and the ability to control yaw using inertia.

MagLev Aero says this thing will be capable of efficient, high-speed cruise. So there’s going to be some horizontal thrusters somewhere on this thing as well as the lift fan.

There’s some thorny aerodynamic issues here; a similar-looking concept was examined by Northwestern Polytechnical University researchers Y. Jiang and B. Zhang in 2015, and they proposed the idea of closing the lift ring off with top and bottom shutters to enable smooth cruise flight with minimal drag.

The transition, however, is going to be a problem. The lift fans apparently create enormous drag in forward motion, as well as a nose-up pitching tendency. Indeed, Jiang and Zhang later proposed a flight transition strategy in which the aircraft would rise up to a high hover on the annular fan, then start up the forward propulsion while dropping down in a glide, until the shutters are closed, the thing’s up to speed, and it’s ready to fly on the wing alone.

It probably wouldn’t be that hairy of a move from inside the cabin, but it certainly seems like it might eat up a bit of whatever energy was saved in the efficiency of the fan.

“I’m thrilled to reveal the breakthrough propulsion technology we have been working so diligently and passionately on for the past few years in stealth,” said Ian Randall, co-founder and CEO of MagLev Aero, in a press release.

“The eVTOL industry has achieved many important milestones in the pursuit of urban air mobility,”said Rod Randall, MagLev Aero’s co-founder and chairman. “MagLev Aero’s breakthrough technology is poised to extend these successes with a ground-up designed electric propulsion platform that is purpose-built for ultra-low noise in vertical take off and landing, as well as cruise, and will allow industrial design that provides for a compelling user experience. We believe our HyperDrive innovation applies to a variety of sizes, configurations and use cases, and we look forward to working with OEMs and other partners to bring our technology to market.”

Source: MagLev Aero

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WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Why take taxis through congested city streets when you can just fly to your final destination?

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A while ago London Heathrow announced that in 2025 they’d launch an air taxi service into the center of London, and now, if you’re heading to O’Hare International Airport from downtown Chicago, you too might be able to skip traffic by taking an “air taxi” instead of a traditional taxi – provided that your jaunt can wait a couple of years.

United Airlines announced Thursday that it will launch Chicago’s first commercial air taxi route in 2025, leveraging electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft to transport people between hotspots.

The Future of Transportation, by keynote Matthew Griffin

Beginning in 2025, residents and tourists can hop onto an Archer Aviation “Midnight” eVTOL from Vertiport Chicago to O’Hare International Airport and vice versa. Vertiport Chicago, the continent’s largest eVTOL takeoff and landing facility, is conveniently located near several medical, shopping, and recreation amenities, making it an ideal hub for the city’s new transportation option. A flight between the two take off and landing points will take about 10 minutes, compared with 35 minutes of driving (in light traffic) and an hour of public transit use.

That could be a pretty comfortable 10 minutes. With a total payload capacity of 1,000 pounds, Midnight can carry up to four passengers with minimal luggage, making it a practical transportation option for business travellers, couples, or small families. It’s also said to be far quieter than a helicopter at just 45 dBA (versus helicopters’ 100 dBA or more). Archer hasn’t offered a lot of visibility into Midnight’s cabin, but sneak peeks appear to show wide seats with harness-style seat belts, similar to the kind you’d wear on an open-door helicopter ride.

“Both Archer and United are committed to decarbonizing air travel and leveraging innovative technologies to deliver on the promise of the electrification of the aviation industry,” said United Airlines Ventures president Michael Leskinen on Thursday. “Once operational, we’re excited to offer our customers a more sustainable, convenient, and cost-effective mode of transportation during their commutes to the airport.”

See the newest flying taxi unveiled

United first expressed public interest in eVTOL transportation last year when it shared that it had purchased 200 electric air taxis from Eve Air Mobility. Just before this announcement, United had promised Archer a minimum purchase of $10 million to get travellers to and from airports via eVTOL. Both investments are part of United’s plan to become carbon neutral without using traditional offsets by 2050 – a goal well complemented by the state of Illinois, which aims to use 100% clean energy by the same year.

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WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Regular cars have racing series, and soon flying cars could have their own series as well …

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Today we have Formula E and Formula 1 racing, Extreme E, Nascar, and all manner of other global racing series. But one that we don’t have yet is a flying car racing series, although that might soon change. Following more than 350 test flights, a bunch of prototypes, and two demonstration races of its remotely piloted Airspeeder Mk3 eVTOL, Alauda Aeronautics has revealed the design for the first crewed racer – which boasts a top speed of 360 km/h and a range of 300 km.

Back in 2017, Australia’s Matt Pearson launched a Kickstarter that proposed building manned electric vertical take-off and landing – or eVTOL – racing machines and creating a new aerial sport around them. The Alauda Aeronautics team cancelled the campaign after only attracting 49 backers, but vowed to continue development.

Airspeeder made its international public debut in 2019, and launched a full-sized working prototype in early 2021. After lots and lots of testing and tweaking, a remotely piloted drag race later that year was followed in 2022 by an uncrewed EAX Series head-to-head around a kilometer-long circuit near Adelaide.

Learn more about the future

Now the renders for the first crewed eVTOL racer, the Mk4, have landed and reveal a complete redesign. Full details are still to come, but we do know that the new racing eVTOL measures 5.73 m long (18.79 ft), 3.62 m wide (11.87 ft) and 1.44 m high (4.72 ft), and tips the scales at 950 kg (2,094 lb).

Where the Mk3 remotely piloted flyer was 100% battery-electric, Alauda has included a 1,000-kW (1,340-hp) hydrogen turbogenerator in the Mk4 manned racer to power the batteries and motors. This Thunderstrike engine features “a unique combuster made using 3D printing techniques developed in the space industry for rocket engines. The combuster’s design keeps the hydrogen flame temperature relatively low, greatly reducing nitrous oxide emissions.”

The intention is to source green hydrogen for the fuel to keep the carbon footprint as low as possible.

The Airspeeder Mk4 is reported capable of zipping from a standing start to its top speed of 360 km/h (223.6 mph) in 30 seconds. The four pairs of shielded rotors are mounted to 3D printed gimbals, with an AI-powered flight controller adjusting tilt angle for take-off and flight.

“This makes the Mk4 not only fast in a straight line, but also able to manoeuvre with the incredible precision essential in close-action racing,” the press release reads. “In fact, it handles less like a multi-copter and more like a jet fighter or Formula 1 racing car.”

As you can see from the supplied images, the Mk4 also rocks F1 race car looks, with the carbon fiber monocoque sporting sizable air intakes and front and rear wings plus short mid-body box wings. Cameras, sensors and comms equipment can also be seen dotted around the frame, though details on such things have not been shared at this stage.

The Airspeeder Mk4 will make its public debut at Southern Australia’s Southstart innovation festival later this month. Alauda says that flight testing is already underway, that team entries for the crewed racing series are now open for entries and that the first races should happen some time in 2024. The video below has more.

“We, and the world, are ready for crewed flying car racing,” said Pearson. “We have built the vehicles, developed the sport, secured the venues, attracted the sponsors and technical partners. Now is the time for the world’s most progressive, innovative and ambitious automotive brands, OEM manufacturers and motorsport teams to be part of a truly revolutionary new motorsport. In unveiling the crewed Airspeeder Mk4 we show the vehicles that will battle it out in blade-to-blade racing crewed by the most highly-skilled pilots in their fields.”

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WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Bladeless VTOL aircraft make a lot more sense than prop based ones, but getting the technology right is very hard.

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When you watch sci-fi movies like Blade Runner or I, Robot you’ll notice that none of the flying cars have propellers like all of today’s flying taxi’s, or eVTOL’s as they’re formally known – except for this concept. And all that’s because today we don’t have the technology to lift such heavy loads without propellers. Until now …

Like bladeless Dyson fans on steroids, Jetoptera’s new unique aircraft propulsion systems look like pure sci-fi. But they’re beginning to demonstrate some fascinating capabilities in testing, and the next step will be a super-fast VTOL aircraft design.

The Future of Transportation, by keynote speaker Matthew Griffin

I’ve explained these fluidic propulsion systems before in detail, but the master of the technology Sir James Dyson also did a good job of explaining the basic concept to The Telegraph back in 2010. But in a nutshell, they’re not magic, they don’t use ionic propulsion like some other propless drones I’ve talked about before, and while there are no blades or moving parts visible, they require a flow of compressed air to function.

You can use whatever you like as a compressed air source, but Jetoptera doesn’t see a ton of utility at this point in an electric compressor; battery density simply isn’t high enough to deliver range figures the company would consider useful. Instead, the company is starting out with efficient gas turbine generators, routing the exhaust gas through the fluidic propulsion systems.

This compressed air is forced through tiny, directional slits all around the inner surface of Jetoptera’s hollow propulsion units. These inner surfaces are shaped like wings, and they do the same job, creating a low-pressure vortex right in the middle of the loop as the compressed air rushes over them.

See it in action

The low-pressure vortex – plus the fluid entrainment vortices that form where the accelerated air rushes out the back and interacts with ambient air – sucks up to 15 times as much air through the loop as was fed through by the compressor, and this multiplies the thrust accordingly.

The biggest and first benefit is efficiency. Jetoptera says the system delivers 10% more thrust and uses 50% less fuel than a small turbojet. Compared to turbofans or turboprops, it’s about 30% lighter and much less mechanically complex – all clear advantages in aviation.

When it comes to transitioning VTOL aircraft, the fluidic propulsion system is much lighter and less complex than tilting propeller systems, and you’re not trying to tilt a great big spinning gyroscope, so it’s easier to adjust the angle as you transition between VTOL and cruise flight.

They’re reportedly significantly quieter than propellers, too; with acoustic treatment Jetoptera says it’s expecting to prove they’re as much as 25 dBA quieter than a comparable prop, with an atonal noise signature. They also won’t contribute much in the way of vibrations, although you do have to account for noise and vibrations from the combustion generator.

You can position them around your airframe without worrying about having spinning propellers near ground crew or pedestrians, and you can easily design them to retract into the airframe for high-speed cruise if necessary.

What’s more, you can tailor the shape to suit your application; in a blown-wing Short Take Off and Landing (STOL) design, for example, you might design long, flattish fluidic propulsion units that can push air evenly right across the surface of the wing. Indeed, the ability to generate so much lift from a wing surface means you can have much shorter wings and a much more compact form factor than a traditional airplane design – hence why many of Jetoptera’s concepts and prototypes use a tight box wing.

Indeed, that’s one of the things Jetoptera has been testing. The company says it’s just finished its fourth Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract with the US Air Force, all of which are stepping stones toward an eventual HSVTOL (High-speed VTOL) aircraft design.

The most recent contract allowed for the design and build of a test rig for an upper surface blown wing, using a high-lift flap system to deliver the maximum possible amount of lift. Jetoptera worked with aerospace heavyweight Northrop Grumman, and its subsidiary, unconventional aerospace design and materials specialist Scaled Composites, hooking up the test system to an electric compressor for static testing.

The company says the tests demonstrated lift coefficients “exceeding 8.0 – up to 40% better than propeller blown wings results obtained under other programs and with lower noise emission and vibrations.”

Jetoptera says it’s also built a sub-scale model of its conceptual design for the AFWERX HSVTOL program, in which it’s one of 11 companies still in the running to design a next-gen VTOL military aircraft capable of much higher performance than anything currently on the market.

The sub-scale model is already being tested in a wind tunnel. Jetoptera says it predicts this machine will be capable of speeds around Mach 0.8 (988 km/h, 614 mph). That’s faster than the cruise speed of a Boeing Dreamliner, and roughly twice as fast as any tiltrotor can manage. To reach these speeds, the fluidic propulsion systems will need to be fed by some pretty serious engines, so turbine engine specialist Pratt & Whitney is joining Northrop Grumman and Scaled Composites on the project team.

The concept aircraft design will be validated in the next six months, as part of a separate Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) contract with AFWERX that’s already underway, and Jetoptera says it expects to have a demonstrator built in 2025 – perhaps not full scale, but “the largest size HSVTOL demonstrator we have ever worked on and with unique capabilities.”

For such a radically different and sci-fi-looking concept, Jetoptera’s fluidic propulsion system is certainly starting to look like it’s got a legitimate contribution to make in the aerospace world. The company says it’s signed a deal for a parafoil propulsion system, and it’s in discussions with other companies looking to use these things on manned and unmanned aircraft in a range of sizes. It’s amassed more than 50 patents, with at least 100 more in the pipeline.

One thing it hasn’t done much of is updating its YouTube channel and publicity materials, so you’ll have to look at this four-year-old video to see the fluidic propulsion system in action on a remote-controlled aircraft.

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WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

We won’t in fact have flying cars, they’ll basically be big drones that carry passengers, so this design is about as close to a commercial flying car we could see enter production.

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California startup Alef Aeronautics has shown off a remarkably fresh take on the street-legal eVTOL flying car in its 2025 Model A. This wild design debuts a 2-axis tilting cabin, and a horizontal cruise flight mode unlike anything I’ve seen before and the car wouldn’t look out of place in several sci-fi movies.

Running entirely on batteries the Model A uses four hub motors to get around on the street, in a hyper-minimalist frame that looks almost insubstantial from above. In the middle is a round, glassed-over one- or two-seat cabin that’s completely isolated from the external bodywork. Indeed, if you want to hop inside, you need to open separate doors in the bodywork and the cabin itself.

The Future of Transportation, by Futurist Keynote Matthew Griffin

The upward-facing parts of the bodywork are made as a lightweight 3D mesh, and if you guessed there are lift rotors beneath for VTOL purposes, you’d be right. As a drone-style airframe, the Model A runs an octacopter setup, with eight propellers, each with maybe a two-foot (61 cm) diameter, and the mesh skin allows air to flow smoothly through the car.

This is about as far as many designers would take the idea, and they’d end up with an acceptable enough multicopter-style flight platform as a result, which would be severely limited in range by its weight and the stiflingly low energy density of today’s batteries. But Alef has designed this thing to be much more interesting.

Once you’re airborne, the cabin rotates 90 degrees to the side, so you’re facing sideways. Then, as you go to move forward, the cabin is gimballed to remain level as the airframe tilts around you.

See the launch of the new flying car (Skip to 8:54)

As your airspeed increases, so does the tilt of the airframe, and at a certain point, the side panels of what was once the car become airfoils in their own right. Thus, pilot and passenger find themselves looking at unobstructed panoramic views from a bubble cockpit sandwiched vertically between two wings in a biplane formation. Frankly, it starts looking like something you’d see in Star Wars.

This remarkable repurposing of the bodywork as a set of wings delivers enough lift to make the Model A fly efficiently in cruise mode, and while the design remains limited to how much battery can be carried in that gimballed cabin, Alef says the Model A should be capable of 200 miles (322 km) of driving, or 110 miles (177 km) in the air – a very generous range for a vehicle of this nature.

Alef claims it’s been flying full-sized prototypes since 2019 and has demonstrated this machine driving and flying at full scale for its investors – although according to CNET, it’s yet to attempt the full transition to horizontal cruise flight with a pilot on board.

One of many difficulties involved in building a flying car is working out how to meet automotive crash safety standards with a chassis that’s light enough to lift off. That challenge goes double for eVTOL designs that need to lift their entire weight skyward without the benefit of wing lift. Many folk simply go for a three-wheeler platform, since it can be registered as a motorcycle instead, removing most of the red tape.

Not Alef; this thing has to be a four-wheeler in order to remain symmetrical in cruise flight. But there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that this ultra-lightweight chassis will pass street-legal homologation as a car. So Alef has taken the unusual step of designating the Model A a “low speed vehicle,” which will be treated more or less the same as a street-legal modified golf cart. It’ll need a bare minimum of street gear: headlights, taillights, indicators, mirrors, windshield wipers, a horn, that sort of thing. There’ll be a weight limit, which shouldn’t be a problem.

It’ll also be limited to somewhere between 20 and 25 miles per hour (32-40 km/h) on the street. So despite the rather sporty look that ex-Bugatti/Jaguar designer Hirash Razaghi has created for this machine, it’ll be as slow as a wet week. Still, Alef doesn’t expect you’ll want to drive it much anyway; the road gear is solely for last-mile stuff and the company expects you’ll do most of your miles in the air.

Of course, to do this, you’ll have to go to designated areas for takeoff and landing, so initially, you’ll more or less have to mosey your way over to an airport or a street-accessible helipad. Alef says it believes in the longer term that the laws will change and you’ll be able to lift off and touch down pretty much anywhere except restricted zones. In this, and other regards, the company appears extremely optimistic.

Alef is opening up pre-orders on the Model A, at a price of $300,000, with deliveries slated to begin in Q4 2025. It says you’ll probably be able to fly one with a Part 107 drone license, which only requires a written test, but it’s not ruling out the possibility that you’ll need a pilot’s license of some sort.

But the company says it’s focused on making this thing much more accessible down the line, with a long-term plan to make a 4-6 person “Model Z” version by 2035, capable of 300 miles (483 km) on the street and 220 miles (354 km) in the air, or more than double that with a hydrogen powertrain.

With a few million dollars behind it, thanks largely to venture capitalist Tim Draper, the company is striking out to realise its vision and get these things into the air. Now look, the harsh reality of the situation is that building cars and planes separately is hard. Building multi-mode vehicles like street-legal flying cars is exceptionally hard, and building electric VTOL flying cars adds another brutal layer of difficulty. Building them to sell makes things even harder, and producing them in mass quantities is probably the hardest of all.

So whatever progress Alef has made in stealth mode, it’s got a huge mountain to climb from here, and one littered with the corpses of rivals. But whatever the fate of the Model A, people it appears have got a huge appreciation for a novel idea, and Alef’s design is so different and clever that it’d be great to see it get a chance to prove its mettle.

Source: Alef Aeronautics

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WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Any time anyone creates a new vehicle invariably someone wants to race them and create a new sport.

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Around four months after sharing footage of its flying car’s first test flights in Australia, Alauda Aeronautics has now announced that they’ve carried out the world’s first eVTOL drag race, albeit with no humans onboard after a pair of remotely piloted Airspeeder Mk3 aircraft were flown down an aerial drag strip as part of pre-season preparations ahead a full blown F1-style air race series which is slated for later this year.

I first caught wind of their ambitions back in 2017 with the startup outlining a plan to “usher in the era of urban air mobility” by “fostering innovation through high-speed and high-risk aerial racing.”

Learn more about the Future of Mobility, by Futurist Keynote Matthew Griffin

The most recent test flights saw the Mk3 Octocopter take to the air over a South Australian desert for the first time, and these vehicles are no slouches. They can fly from 0-100 km/h (0-62 mph) in 2.8 seconds and are designed to reach altitudes of 500 m (1,640 ft).

The world’s first ever eVTOL drag race

The latest outing for the Mk3, the latest generation, saw two of them pitted against one another in an aerial drag race, each piloted by a team of Alauda Aeronautics engineers.

The course was a short one, at just 300 m (984 ft), but saw the pair rise to an altitude of 15 m (50 ft) and the leading craft reach a top speed of 155 km/h (96 mph), with Team Bravo leading Team Alpha across the finish line.

Eventually the fully fledged Airspeeder race series will see up to four teams each with two pilots who will race the aircraft “blade-to-blade” around an electronically governed Augmented reality (AR) enabled “sky track.” These will be hosted at different locations around the world and streamed online, and according to Alauda, are still scheduled to kick off this year.

Source: Alauda Aeronautics

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WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Flying is always the fastest way to go – and flying taxis are now literally starting to take off.

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Flying taxis and EVTOL’s have literally been taking off everywhere over the past few years with several launches in Germany, the UAE, UK, and US, and with new announcements coming almost every day and new purpose air ports being built they’re now becoming a commercial reality with actual reality paying passengers and order books.

Now one of those companies, Vertical Aerospace, believes it has more conditional pre-orders for its eVTOL than most companies in this industry, reaching up to 1,350 aircraft worth $5.4 billion. American Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, Avolon, Bristow Group, and Iberojet are some of its global customers. In addition, the company has now taken a significant step in the UK by teaming up with a major international hub airport – Heathrow.

The future of air taxis

Vertical and Heathrow have announced they’ve started working on the framework for future eVTOL operations, from airport infrastructure and regulatory changes that need to be made to analyzing the potential impact on the surrounding communities and job opportunities. According to Vertical, some of the airlines operating at Heathrow are interested in supporting the development of eVTOL technology and bringing it to the public.

Vertical’s eVTOL, the VA-X4, could transport four passengers from Heathrow to London in just 12 minutes. And it can do that with zero emissions, almost no noise at all, and with about the same costs as conventional taxis. The VA-X4 stands out among eVTOLs for its high-performance powertrain, developed together with Rolls-Royce, and advanced avionics similar to those of the F-35B, a military aircraft that can take-off and land vertically.

Combining speed levels over 200 mph (322 kph) with a reduced noise level, which is said to be 100 times lower than that of a helicopter, the VA-X4 could provide efficient and comfortable transportation that also supports carbon neutrality goals.

Vertical also says that governments and local authorities should be more proactive in supporting electric commercial flight and helping it become a reality by 2025. Particularly, that the UK’s Department for Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) “should establish an operating framework in the next few years, including the steps for certification, ‘reforms to airspace management,’ and access for electric aircraft.”

The VA-X4 will also begin operating in Japan, by 2025, through the collaboration between Japan Airlines (JAL) and an international aircraft leasing company, Avolon, one of Vertical’s partners.

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WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Flying sky taxis that can take upto four passengers are great, but they’re not going to solve our cities congestion problems alone.

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Braeden Kelekona is wedged on the New Jersey Transit train heading from Manhattan’s Penn Station into upstate New York, where he and his wife are going to visit friends for the Memorial Day weekend.

“It’s quite a packed train,” he says, apologizing for the hubbub that, at times, threatens to drown out his voice on the call.

Although everyone around him is still wearing masks, the sight of a buzzing New York commuter train is one of those scenes of normalcy that hasn’t exactly been normal over the past year. As many parts of the world start to emerge, blinking, from 15 months of pandemic lockdown, so too can people lift their heads to the proverbial horizon to focus on the future. For many, that means once again getting on public transport, such as trains, and thinking about vacations and weekend getaways. For Kelekona, it means thinking about what’s going to replace the train.

Kelekona, the founder of a startup called, well, Kelekona, has an ambitious idea for the future of mass transportation – a massive eVTOL aircraft that resembles a flying saucer, a futuristic blimp or, for Gerry Anderson fans, a real-life Thunderbird 2. Its 3D printed airframe promises to lift off the ground by way of eight thrust-vectoring fans with variable pitch propellers. These will enable each stage of flight, from vertical takeoff to forward flight and landing.

A different kind of eVTOL

“One hundred percent we are trying to compete with public transportation,” said Kelekona in a recent interview with CNBC.

What differentiates this eVTOL aircraft from that of other companies building rival flying sky taxis, like those from EHang and Volocopter that are already zipping around the airspace of various cities and selling tickets, isn’t just the design, however – it’s the scale.

While Uber Elevate, for instance, promises to launch its air taxi service as soon as 2023, it will carry just four passengers and a pilot. Kelekona, on the other hand, claims that its lifting body eVTOL will be capable of transporting a maximum of 40 passengers and a pilot — or 10,000 pounds of cargo — for a price comparable to an Amtrak ticket.

“We have a really small airspace in New York,” said Kelekona. “It never made sense to us to create a small aircraft that was only able to carry up to six people. You have to have the kind of mass transit we rely on here in the city. It makes sense to try to move as many people as possible in one aircraft, so that we’re not hogging airspace.”

According to Kelekona, the plan is to initially offer a route from Manhattan to the Hamptons. That flight, lasting around 30 minutes, will cost $85. Other planned routes will include Boston to New York, New York to Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles to San Francisco.

To achieve these flights will, of course, take an impressive amount of battery power — which is exactly what Kelekona says the company has at its disposal. He describes the batteries as “similar to the batteries you would see in a Model S, Model 3 Tesla,” but strung together to create an enormous modular battery pack.

“What we decided to build is a flying battery,” he noted. “What that allowed us to do is have greater endurance. Instead of building an interesting airframe and then trying to figure out how to put the battery into that aircraft, we started with the battery first and put things on top of it.”

The battery pack the company says it will use has 3.6 megawatt hours of capacity, enough to power hundreds or thousands of homes.

“That’s quite a lot of power,” Kelekona said.

To be clear, the company hasn’t actually built one of these enormous flying aircraft just yet. All the work so far has been done in computer simulation, although he said that “we feel strongly that we have about plus or minus two percent read on all our performance data.”

The company sprang into being in 2019, and Kelekona said that, “I think you can expect to see our aircraft in the air next year.”

Initially, however, this will be exclusively for cargo transportation. Passenger routes are planned for 2024, although, as Kelekona acknowledged, this depends on the certification process with the Federal Aviation Administration.

“That’s one of the trickier parts with passenger operation,” he said. “The FAA is still, to this day, creating the right protocols to test durability and reliability. They just want to make sure that the aircraft is [ready for whatever incident might] happen. They want to see the redundancy on your aircraft to mitigate that risk. In that regard, there’s a lot of overlap with the traditional aircraft certification, but at the same time with battery technology and electric motors, it has a different level of safety.”

Like drone deliveries, eVTOL vehicles are one of the great Schrödinger’s cat technologies of our times – both everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. There is no shortage of companies working on flying taxis right now (although perhaps none with the ambitious size promised by Kelekona), but so far, it’s very early days for this as a mode of mass transportation. However, for those who are in it to win it, it’s an exciting time.

“It’s a hot topic right now, not only because there’s a lot of capital being poured into the space, but being vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, you can do very interesting things as far as transporting passengers,” Kelekona said. “You don’t need a lot of new infrastructure. You’re able to do things very uniquely compared to how traditional aircraft engines operate, with their long runways and [other requirements.]”

In some ways, now is the worst time in the world to try and get into the business of flying machines. The pandemic has knocked the hell out of the established aviation industry. It’s not just the immediate effects of coronavirus-related policy, either: Consumer habits are likely to change as well. Who needs to catch a red-eye flight to attend a single meeting when a Zoom call can do 90 percent of the same thing without the hassle? But, as noted aviation analyst Sun Tzu once said, “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”

In other words, maybe this is the perfect time to bring the world flying trains …

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