One of the innovations at this year’s Paris Olympics was supposed to be an electric flying taxi service. Germany’s Volocopter promised its electric-powered, two-seater aircraft, the VoloCity, would be ferrying passengers around the city. It never happened. Instead the company ran demonstration flights. While missing that deadline was embarrassing, behind the scenes a more serious issue was playing out – Volocopter was urgently trying to raise fresh investment to keep the firm going. Talks to borrow €100m from the government failed in April. Now hopes are pinned on China’s Geely, which is in talks to take an 85% stake in Volocopter in return for $95m of funding.
The high-profile British player in the eVTOL market is Vertical Aerospace. The Bristol-based company was founded in 2016 by businessman Stephen Fitzpatrick, who also set up OVO Energy. Its striking VX4 design uses eight large propellers mounted on slim, aircraft style wings to generate lift. Mr Fitzpatrick has made ambitious claims about the aircraft, suggesting it would be “100 times” safer and quieter than a helicopter, for 20% of the cost.
The company has made progress. After completing a programme of remote-controlled testing, it began carrying out piloted tests earlier this year. Initially, these were carried out with the aircraft tethered to the ground. In early November, it carried out its first untethered take-off and landing. But there have also been serious setbacks. In August last year, a remotely-piloted prototype was badly damaged when it crashed during testing at Cotswold Airport, after a propeller blade fell off.
Airbus is also working on an eVTOL project, called the CityAirbus NextGen, which has eight propellers and a range of 80km. This is a technology project for their engineers, and they’ve got the money, and they’ve got the know how.
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