Small personal electric aircraft are on their way, known as passenger drones and electrical vertical take-off and landing ( eVTOL ) aircraft they are the future of urban air mobility.
The first piloted eVTOL services are expected as early as this year, but pilot-less autonomous eVTOLs are coming soon after that. That’s right, autonomous flying cars and flying taxis could be a reality in our lifetime.
0:00 General description how cars fly
01:07 Black fly car
02:01 EHang drone like air taxi
02:37 Volocopter
03:01 Other (Airbus italdesign, Uber, Toyota skydrive)
Here are featured the drone like flying cars made by the companies working towards the first commercial flying taxis:
Black fly car
The Opener BlackFly flying car isn't quite the nuclear-powered flying cars that the Jetsons promised us - it's possibly better. Taking a leap current electric cars, the BlackFly is an electric personal aerial transportation system that you won't need thousands of hours of training to fly. Triple-redundant flight controls, distributed, isolated battery cells, and features like cruise control and landing assist mean that the BlackFly is simple and intuitive to operate. With vertical takeoff and landing capability and a storage format that's the size of a small trailer, the BlackFly can be stored or transported nearly anywhere.
EHang air taxi
This Guangzhou, China, based company develops and manufactures passenger drones. Their electric autonomous passenger area vehicle concept EHang AAV is a two-seater drone capable of carrying two passengers for up to 21 minutes or any destination about 30 miles away. The drone’s propellers even fold in, which means it could land in a standard parking space. Earlier this year, EHang became the first company to obtain a commercial licence from the Chinese government to test passenger-grade drones.
Volocopter
German aviation company Volocopter has already conducted several tests of its electric, two-seater air taxi, built to carry a pilot and one passenger. The first manned urban test flight of Volocopter’s flagship 2X eVTOL aircraft - which has a range of 22 miles and a top speed of 68 mph - took place in Singapore in 2019. At the same time, Volocopter also unveiled its VoloPort solution, the world’s first flying taxi station. Clearly, Volocopter is targeting the market for short hops above busy, congested city streets rather than intercity travel, and is gunning to make flying taxis a viable, everyday solution. The company expects to begin commercial flights in 2022, transporting passengers from one VoloPort to another. Longer-term, the goal is to not need any special taxi station infrastructure, meaning you could potentially hail a Volocopter taxi from any old parking lot.
Other (Airbus, Uber, Toyota skydrive)
It is not just start-ups planning airborne taxis. Uber announced it was joining forces with Joby Aviation, a California-based aerospace company that specialises in electric aviation. Uber’s plan in partnering with Joby is to “launch a fast, reliable, clean, and affordable urban air taxi service with piloted service by 2023, while autonomous, pilot-less aircraft are expected to follow by around 2030.
Airbus had been working with car maker Audi and has revealed a next-generation CityAirbus electric plane, a "flying taxi" built for urban areas. CityAirbus is in the design phase but is being developed to fly a range of 80 km at 120 km/hour. Noise reduction is a key feature of the plane, which is expected to operate at lower than 70 dBa.
Негізгі бет The Mindboggling Flying Cars and Air Taxis Of The Future
Пікірлер