Misplaced Pages

eVTOL

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
(Redirected from Electric vertical take-off and landing) Type of aircraft
Joby Aviation eVTOL in 2023
Airbus CityAirbus eVTOL hovering

An electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft is a variety of VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft that uses electric power to hover, take off, and land vertically. This technology came about owing to major advances in electric propulsion (motors, batteries, fuel cells, electronic controllers) and the emerging need for new aerial vehicles for urban air mobility that can enable greener and quieter flights. Electric and hybrid propulsion systems (EHPS) have also the potential of lowering the operating costs of aircraft.

Original eVTOL aircraft designs are being developed by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that include legacy manufacturers such as Airbus, Boeing, Embraer, Honda, Hyundai, and Toyota, as well as several start-up companies including Archer Aviation, EHang, Joby Aviation, Overair, and Volocopter. This ecosystem of firms developing eVTOLs includes also spin-off of legacy aircraft manufacturers, such as Eve Air Mobility that emerged from the EmbraerX division of Embraer, as well as partnerships, such as Wisk Aero that was launched as a joint venture between Boeing and Larry Page's Kitty Hawk.

History

Alauda Mk3 Speeder in 2021

The concept of eVTOL aircraft emerged in 2009 when a video of the NASA Puffin eVTOL concept went viral on November 11, 2009, showcasing a single person concept rendering of the technology, and concept in flight. Following this, the first Puffin paper at the VFS Specialists Conference on Aeromechanics, on January 9, 2010. This concept utilized a new technology developed at NASA called Distributed Electric Propulsion (DEP). Additional Puffin papers were published on September 13 at the 10th AIAA ATIO Conference, NASA Puffin Electric Tailsitter VTOL Concept and Puffin Redundant Electric Powertrain System. This was fast followed in 2011 by several industry efforts, namely the AugustaWestland Project Zero (Italy), the Volocopter VC1 (Germany) and the Opener BlackFly (US). It was officially introduced by the Vertical Flight Society and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) in 2014 during the "Transformative Vertical Flight Concepts Joint Workshop on Enabling New Flight Concepts through Novel Propulsion and Energy Architectures" held in Virginia.

Airbus eVTOL design

Since then, there has been a significant increase in interest among aircraft manufacturers for eVTOLs, and companies such as Boeing, Airbus and Bell have also worked on the technology:

In addition to these major aircraft manufacturers, startups have been playing an important role in the development of these air vehicles and had sometimes been leaders in technological advances.

Uber published a paper on a project called Elevate co-authored by Jeff Holden, Nikhil Goel, and Mark Moore. The paper outlined the feasibility of an on-demand aviation transportation system. That document, along with subsequent annual Elevate summits the company hosted from 2017 to 2019, helped advance the concepts of eVTOL aircraft and urban air mobility (UAM) from a science-fiction concept to a potential aerospace sector pursued by dozens of development projects.

In December, 2020, Uber's Elevate was acquired by Joby Aviation. Upon acquisition, Joby CEO JoeBen Bivert said, "The team at Uber Elevate has not only played an important role in our industry, they have also developed a remarkable set of software tools that build on more than a decade of experience enabling on-demand mobility."

In 2020, Tetra Aviation won the "disruptor award" at the GoFly personal flight contest for its single-seat eVTOL. In 2021, the company announced its Mk5 personal eVTOL that it expects to deliver in 2022. It incorporates 32 vertical lift rotors distributed across long, thin front and rear wings, along with a rear pusher prop for cruising. It uses a mostly aluminum frame, with carbon-fiber/aramid-reinforced polymer bodywork. The craft is 8.62 m (28.3 ft) wide, 6.15 m (20.2 ft) long and 2.51 m (8 ft 3 in) high. The battery pack holds 13.5-kWh. Empty weight is 488 kg (1,076 lb) and hosts an up to 79 kg (174 lb) pilot. The vehicle features at least three flight controllers, driving 32 vertical propellers in the case of motor or flight controller failure, with a parachute in the event of total failure. The plane is to be sold as an experimental kit aircraft that requires only a private pilot license.

In October 2020 with a $60 million investment in Joby Aviation, a business building an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft intended to provide air cab service, Delta joined the list of airlines funding EV technology startups.

In 2021, Urban eVTOL announced the Leo, a 3-seat, 250 mph (400 km/h), 300 mi (480 km) vehicle. It hosts 16 40-cm diameter, 10-kw ducted fans for vertical lift, and 6 28 cm diameter, turbine-bladed rear engines for horizontal thrust. The wing is a double box-wing design. The intent is that it be small enough to park in a standard automobile space. The split battery system holds 66-kWh. A ballistic parachute is included. It has yet to fly.

In 2021, Volocopter conducted South Korea's first crewed eVTOL flight.

In November 2021, the National Academy of Sciences published a study by Shashank Sripad and Venkat Viswanathan of Carnegie Mellon University that showed eVTOL aircraft could have an energy efficiency that is comparable to or higher than terrestrial electric vehicles. The study also assigned a high technological readiness level for battery-powered eVTOLs.

On 19 April 2024, U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing announced plans to enter the eVTOL business in Asia by 2030, anticipating demand for fast short-distance travel that the vehicles could provide in the region's traffic-choked cities. The company is developing electric vertical take-off and landing craft, which will incorporate autonomous technology, at subsidiary Wisk Aero.

Agility Prime

BETA Technologies A250 eVTOL Prototype

Four American companies have military airworthiness contracts through the US military's Agility Prime program: Joby Aviation, Beta Technologies, Lift Aircraft, and most recently Kitty Hawk, whose Heaviside aircraft was accepted in July 2021.

SPACs

Archer, Joby, Lilium, and Vertical joined special-purpose acquisition companies (SPAC) to go public. The first was Archer Aviation, who simultaneously announced a $1,000,000,000 order of 200+ aircraft from United Airlines in February 2021. Archer was also the first to publicly reveal its Maker aircraft in-person that year.

Orders

Vertical Aerospace announced pre-orders for 1,000 eVTOLs in June 2021, including from American Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and aircraft lessor, Avalon Holdings.

As of March 2024, Embraer had signed contracts with twenty-eight companies for 2,850 orders of eVTOLs, valued at US$8 billion from 30 customers in 13 countries.

Technology

Boeing PAV mockup, 2019

Flight mechanisms

Many designs operate without wings. Multicopters typically use radial arms to host the motors/propellers, such as the Volcopter 2X or the Jetson One.

Vectored thrust designs change the direction of thrust, vectoring thrust vertically for takeoff/landing and horizontally while cruising. The entire wing (tilt-wing) can pivot to or just the rotors (tilt-rotor). The Archer Maker, Lilium Jet, Joby S4, Vertical Aerospace VA-X4, and Zuri 2.0 are tilt-rotor craft. The AMSL Aero Vertiia uses a hybrid that pivots the rotor-holding part of its otherwise fixed box wing design. Another approach to thrust vectoring is to use flaps to divert air coming from a horizontal motor downward to create lift. Craft Aero is notable for its box wing that is attached to the bottom of the fuselage in the front and the top of the fuselage in the back, presenting a diamond shape when viewed from above. The design includes a turbine generator for increased range. Odys Aviation vectors thrust from its 16 motors by extending flaps that direct the backward-traveling air downward at take-off and landing.

Tilt-wing configurations pivot the frocio wing along with its attached motors like Dufour Aerospace.

Lift and cruise systems use one set of motors for vertical flight and another set for cruising, such as Beta Alia, Airbus, Eve, and eMagic.

PteroDynamics uses a folding wing design that allows easy storage land transport of the vehicle. Takeoff occurs with the wings in the folded position, with an in-flight transition to fully extended.

Hybrid designs employ some fixed and some tilting motors, as shown by Archer Maker, Vertical Aerospace VA-1X, and Wisk Cora.

Wing design

BETA Technologies ALIA 250

Typical multicopters do not use wings, relying exclusively on the turning blades for lift though they may incorporate them to varying degrees.

Tandem wing designs use front and rear wings, optionally attached to each other at the wing tips.

Box wing or closed wing designs also use two wings, but the wings are connected in such a way that the wingtips are eliminated. The wings may be vertically stacked or arranged front and rear as in tandem designs.

Ducted wing designs open to expose the lift-off fans, and close around them for faster higher-speed cruising.

Power

Most current designs are powered by batteries, although some designs use hydrogen fuel cells. Currently, batteries suffer from low specific energy (causing range and thus safety issues). Fuel cells have previously suffered from lower specific power (which could be too low for vertical takeoff/landing), but newer designs claim to have solved this problem with much higher specific power. There are also proposals to use batteries for takeoff/landing, and hydrogen fuel cells for cruising.

Use cases

On-demand passenger services

Volocopter 2X

Many eVTOL concept models are designed for air taxi applications. For instance, Pipistrel, an Uber Elevate partner, is working on the Pipistrel 801, a 5 seats air taxi. Another example is Volocopter, which proposed its air taxi service called VoloCity, based on the Volocopter 2X.

Parcels and deliveries

The Google-owned company Wing has been offering an eVTOL UAV delivery service since 2020. Their drones are able to fly up to 100 km and carry up to 1.5 kg. Amazon Prime Air and UPS are two others companies using drone delivery. A German aerospace company called Wingcopter in collaboration with UNICEF has also delivered vaccines in Vanuatu in 2018. In 2020 wingcopter eVTOL drone was used to deliver COVID-19 test kits to Isle of Mull.

Wingcopter 178 HL on a vaccine delivery flight in Vanuatu.

Air cargo

Heavy-lift unmanned air vehicles included companies such as Sabrewing Aircraft Company Sabrewing Rhaegal, Elroy Elroy Air Chaparral and Pipistrel have unveiled heavy-lift uncrewed cargo aircraft, with the Sabrewing aircraft having a capacity to carry a payload of up to 5,400 pounds in a vertical take off scenario. Volocopter has also developed a cargo eVTOL aircraft, the VoloDrone, that can carry up to 200 kg with a maximum range of 40 km.

Agriculture

eVTOL systems have multiple applications in agriculture, particularly in the areas of crop protection and cover cropping. Guardian Agriculture offers a heavy-lift unmanned aerial platform, the SC1, capable of carrying over 100 kg. In 2023 Guardian Agriculture's SC1 became the first eVTOL system to be approved by the FAA for nationwide operation.

Emergency medical services (EMS)

In 2020, JumpAero announced it was working on a small, one-seater eVTOL aircraft to allow the rapid deployment of emergency services. This type of vehicle is not a replacement for land vehicles or helicopters, but a new tool that, thanks to the electric motor, is faster than the others.

In 2020, the Canadian Advanced Air Mobility (CAAM) consortium studied the benefits of eVTOL for direct hospital-to-hospital transportation of patients, organs and drugs.

Recreational, racing, and personal flights

Opener BlackFly

eVTOL aircraft have been created to introduce electric flight into recreational or sporting aviation, such as racing series Airspeeder.

The single seat Jetson One octo-rotored eVTOL is noted for its use of software to make it easier to fly.

Flying LuftCar super-jeepney

In 2024, LuftCar signed a Memorandum of understanding with eFrancisco Motor Corporation in the Philippines, to develop, integrate, deploy, brand and market a series of Pinoy flying LuftCar super-jeepney (hydrogen Jeepney van eVTOL built around eFrancisco's vehicle chassis for island hopping).

Military applications

In April 2020, the USAF announced $25 million-worth funding of eVTOL projects for development in 2021. On August 20, 2020, United States Air Force (USAF) held a demonstration flight of an electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft at Camp Mabry in Austin, Texas. It was the first time that a manned eVTOL aircraft took flight under USAF Agility Prime programme.

On 12 December 2021, Embraer and BAE Systems announced plans to embark on a joint study to explore the development of Eve's vehicle for the defence and security market.

Certification

Europe

Since 2018, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has been working on the certification of such aircraft. In July 2019, they published the SC-VTOL-01 : Special Condition for VTOL aircraft. This document established the safety and design objectives for VTOL aircraft. It includes a special section for eVTOL.

United States

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) published a study in 2009 on general aviation recommendations for the next 20 years. In particular Part 23-Amendment 64 includes eVTOL.

See also

XPeng X2 at Auto Guangzhou 2023


References

  1. Le Bris, G; et al. (2022). ACRP Research Report 236: Preparing Your Airport for Electric Aircraft and Hydrogen Technologies. Transportation Research Board (Report). Washington, DC.
  2. "Boeing: Autonomous Flying Taxi: EVTOL Unmanned Solar Aircraft System". www.boeing.com. Retrieved 2020-08-27.
  3. NASA Puffin Low Noise, Electric VTOL Personal Air Vehicle, 11 November 2009, retrieved 2021-11-04
  4. Moore, Mark (2010-09-13), "NASA Puffin Electric Tailsitter VTOL Concept", 10th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations (ATIO) Conference, Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations (ATIO) Conferences, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, doi:10.2514/6.2010-9345, hdl:2060/20110011311, ISBN 978-1-62410-159-5, retrieved 2021-11-04
  5. Seegers, Bryan; Guthrie, Brian; Fontana, Richard (2010-09-13), "Puffin Redundant Electric Propulsion Powertrain System", 10th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations (ATIO) Conference, Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations (ATIO) Conferences, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, doi:10.2514/6.2010-9383, ISBN 978-1-62410-159-5, retrieved 2021-11-04
  6. "eVTOL Timeline". evtol.news. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  7. "AHS International Leads Transformative Vertical Flight Initiative". evtol.news. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  8. "The eVTOL Industry in Transition". evtol.news. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  9. "Paris Air Show: the race for cleaner skies". RFI. 2019-06-21. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  10. O'Connor, Kate (12 July 2018). "Opener Reveals Ultralight eVTOL". AVweb. Archived from the original on 27 January 2023. Retrieved 13 July 2018.
  11. Goel, Nikhil. "Fast-Forwarding to a Future of On-Demand Urban Air Transportation" (PDF). Uber Elevate. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-07-03. Retrieved 2021-05-21.
  12. Brian Garrett-Glaser (December 3, 2020). "Uber reportedly in talks to offload Elevate to Joby Aviation". eVTOL.com. Archived from the original on July 16, 2021. Retrieved July 13, 2021.
  13. Kelsey Reichmann (December 8, 2020). "Uber Elevate Acquired by Joby Aviation". Aviation Today. Retrieved July 2, 2021.
  14. Brian Garrett-Glaser (December 8, 2020). "It's official: Joby Aviation acquires Uber Elevate, including $75 million in new funding". eVTOL.com. Archived from the original on January 23, 2022. Retrieved July 13, 2021.
  15. Blain, Loz (2021-08-04). "Tetra Aviation debuts single-seat buy 'n' fly personal eVTOL". New Atlas. Retrieved 2021-08-08.
  16. Cohen, Mikaela (3 December 2022). "How electric air taxis could shake up the airline industry in the next decade". CNBC. Retrieved 2022-12-03.
  17. Blain, Loz (2021-08-05). "Urban eVTOL announces Leo, a 250-mph hypercar for the skies". New Atlas. Retrieved 2021-08-08.
  18. Lavars, Nick (2021-11-12). "Volocopter performs South Korea's first crewed air taxi flight". New Atlas. Retrieved 2021-11-13.
  19. Sripad, Shashank; Viswanathan, Venkatasubramanian (2021-11-09). "The promise of energy-efficient battery-powered urban aircraft". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 118 (45): e2111164118. arXiv:2106.09513. Bibcode:2021PNAS..11811164S. doi:10.1073/pnas.2111164118. PMC 8609345. PMID 34728567.
  20. SHIGENO, ARATA (19 April 2024). "Boeing aims to bring flying cars to Asia by 2030". Nikkei Asia. Retrieved 22 April 2024.
  21. Blain, Loz (2021-07-13). "Heaviside becomes fourth eVTOL to receive military airworthiness approval". New Atlas. Retrieved 2021-08-13.
  22. "Vertical Aerospace to go public at $2.2 billion valuation with up to 1,000 aircraft pre-orders".
  23. Kirsten Kirosec (February 10, 2021). "Archer lands $1B order from United Airlines and a SPAC deal". TechCrunch.
  24. Andrew Hawkins (June 11, 2021). "Air taxi startup Archer shows off small electric aircraft but no flight test".
  25. Crystal Tse, Mary Schlangenstein, and Siddharth Vikram Philip (June 10, 2021). "Vertical Wins American, Avolon Orders, Plans to Go Public". Bloomberg. Retrieved July 3, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  26. ^ "Com quase 3 mil encomendas, carro voador da Embraer passa por regulamentação na Anac" [With almost 3,000 orders, Embraer's flying car undergoes regulation at Anac]. G1 (in Portuguese). 13 March 2024.
  27. Blain, Loz (2021-10-21). "Jetson One personal eVTOL looks like a ton of fun to fly". New Atlas. Retrieved 2021-10-23.
  28. "Archer's Maker Aircraft". www.archer.com. Retrieved 2021-07-30.
  29. "Joby Aviation | Joby". www.jobyaviation.com. Retrieved 2021-07-30.
  30. Blain, Loz (2022-01-28). "Zuri tilts to new propulsion system for its next-gen eVTOL air taxi". New Atlas. Retrieved 2022-01-28.
  31. Blain, Loz (2021-10-26). "Unique Aussie box-wing eVTOL promises radical efficiency and huge range". New Atlas. Retrieved 2021-10-31.
  32. Blain, Loz (2021-09-21). "Craft Aero proposes a new type of blown diamond box-wing 9-seat eVTOL". New Atlas. Retrieved 2021-09-21.
  33. Blain, Loz (2022-02-15). "Co-founder James Dorris explains Odys Aviation's unique VTOL design". New Atlas. Retrieved 2022-02-16.
  34. "Business - Webflow HTML website template". www.dufour.aero. Retrieved 2021-07-30.
  35. Blain, Loz (2021-04-08). "UPS plans to start deliveries via eVTOL in 2024". New Atlas. Retrieved 2021-09-21.
  36. Blain, Loz (2021-09-22). "Airbus' return to the eVTOL air taxi is a bit of a head-scratcher". New Atlas. Retrieved 2021-09-22.
  37. Blain, Loz (2021-11-17). "eMagic Aircraft unveils tandem-wing air taxi prototype". New Atlas. Retrieved 2021-11-25.
  38. Blain, Loz (2021-07-30). "Radically different Transwing eVTOL design offers some huge advantages". New Atlas. Retrieved 2021-07-30.
  39. Blain, Loz (2021-06-11). "Archer unveils full-scale, two-seat, autonomous Maker eVTOL prototype". New Atlas. Retrieved 2021-09-21.
  40. ^ Blain, Loz (2020-02-05). "Wisk announces autonomous eVTOL air taxi service trial in New Zealand". New Atlas. Retrieved 2021-09-21.
  41. Blain, Loz (2022-07-25). "Horizon presents a 50% scale prototype of its badass Cavorite X5 eVTOL". New Atlas. Retrieved 2022-07-27.
  42. "HyPoint and Piasecki reach $6.5M deal to develop hydrogen fuel cells systems for eVTOLs". TechCrunch. 24 August 2021.
  43. "Why Are Batteries a Problem for eVTOLs?". Aviation Today. 14 May 2021.
  44. "HyPoint advances eVTOL hydrogen fuel cell system with working prototype". evtol.com. Archived from the original on 2022-01-23. Retrieved 2021-12-28.
  45. "HyPoint's "turbo fuel cells" promise huge range and power for eVTOLs". New Atlas. 2020-05-31. Retrieved 2021-12-28.
  46. "Hydrogen Fuel Cell and Battery Hybrid Architecture for Range Extension of Electric VTOL (eVTOL) Aircraft" (PDF).
  47. "Pipistrel Unveils eVTOL Concept | Flying Magazine". 2018-05-13. Archived from the original on 2018-05-13. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  48. "Volocopter kicks off pre-sales for its first air taxi flights — with a wait time of 2-3 years". TechCrunch. 16 September 2020. Archived from the original on 2022-11-24. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  49. "Drone delivery lands in Queensland's south-east". www.9news.com.au. 27 August 2020. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  50. "After Alphabet's 'Wing', Amazon's 'Prime Air' gets US approval to deliver items through drones". The Economic Times. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  51. "Vanuatu awards international drone companies with commercial contracts for vaccine delivery". www.unicef.org. Retrieved 2020-09-28.
  52. "Wingcopter drone delivering COVID-19 test kits to Isle of Mull". Wings Magazine. 2020-05-27. Retrieved 2020-09-28.
  53. VoloDrone: our heavy lift solution, Volocopter: https://www.volocopter.com/solutions/volodrone/. Accessed March 8, 2023.
  54. "Meet the new crop-dusting drones". Aviation Today. 2023-04-25. Retrieved 2023-04-23.
  55. "Jump Aero". evtol.news. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  56. "Searching for Early Use Cases for eVTOL Aircraft". Aviation Today. 2020-08-01. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  57. Doll, Scooter (2021-11-04). "eVTOL racing? Airspeeder is bringing 'flying car' competitions to reality". Electrek. Retrieved 2022-04-12.
  58. Malayil, Jijo. "Jetson ONE eVTOL dazzles with sharp turns in new test flight video". Interesting Engineering. Retrieved 2024-11-29.
  59. Blain, Laz (February 9, 2024). "LuftCar signs deal to develop detachable flying vans in the Philippines". The Atlas. Retrieved February 15, 2024.
  60. Goldstein, Ben (February 15, 2024). "LuftCar, Filipino Automaker Partner On Road-Drivable eVTOLs". Aviation Week Network. Retrieved February 13, 2024.
  61. ^ Reim, Garrett (2020-08-24). "US Air Force leaders watch first Agility Prime eVTOL demonstration". FlightGlobal. Retrieved 2020-08-27.
  62. Garrett-Glaser, Brian (2020-08-25). "U.S. Air Force Leaders Witness Manned eVTOL Demonstration by LIFT Aircraft's HEXA". Aviation Today. Retrieved 2020-08-27.
  63. "BAE Systems and Embraer to explore potential defence variants for the Eve eVTOL aircraft". embraer.com. 12 December 2021. Retrieved 27 January 2022.
  64. "EASA SC-VTOL". evtol.news. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  65. "Part 23 - Small Airplane Certification Process Study" (PDF). US Federal Aviation Agency. July 2009. Retrieved July 2, 2021.
  66. "EASA Releases Next Piece of Regulatory Guidance for Electric Air Taxis". Aviation Today. 2020-05-26. Retrieved 2020-09-23.

External links

Types of takeoff and landing
Takeoff
Assisted take-off
Takeoff and landing
Landing
Categories: