eVTOLs/Urban Mobility

The European Aviation Safety Agency has issued a “special condition” for the certification of eVTOL aircraft up to a maximum takeoff weight of 7,000 pounds carrying up to nine passengers. The two-tiered regulation on so-called “small” eVTOLs is described by EASA as a “first building block” to integration of hybrid and electric VTOL aircraft that […]

Boeing and Kitty Hawk Corporation will be working together on “future efforts to advance safe urban air mobility,” the companies announced on Tuesday. The partnership will focus on Kitty Hawk’s Cora division, which is developing a two-person, all-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxi. As previously reported by AVweb, Kitty Hawk introduced the Cora […]

Battery limitations continue to stunt the potential of electric aircraft, but Uber is betting that current technology is good enough to make urban air mobility workable now and will only improve as the vehicles mature. At this week’s Uber Elevate Summit in Washington, D.C., the company’s Mark Moore said battery capacity and longevity drives both […]

Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Science’s autonomous Passenger Air Vehicle (PAV) electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) prototype crashed during its fifth test flight, company spokespeople told several news outlets at the Uber Elevate Summit this week. No one was injured in the accident—the PAV was flying unmanned—and no damage beyond that sustained by the aircraft […]

Wait. What? These things aren’t flying cars. They just aren’t. Or are they? This is the little argument I had with myself yesterday while covering the Uber Elevate Summit in Washington, D.C., via remote streaming. During his introduction, Nikhil Goel, Uber’s head of product for Elevate, referred to these new air taxis as flying cars. […]

Slovenia-based Pipistrel Vertical Solutions threw its hat into the eVTOL ring Tuesday by revealing a multi-fan electric airplane with vertical takeoff and landing capability. At Uber’s Elevate Summit in Washington, D.C., Pipistrel unveiled the so-called 801 as a five-occupant winged aircraft capable of a 60-mile range at 175 MPH or more. The 801 has four […]

In an alternately inspirational and cautionary talk at Uber’s Elevate Summit in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, acting FAA chief Dan Elwell told the aspiring urban air taxi audience that he’s impressed with ideas and progress the industry has made. But, “When I put my FAA regulator hat on, I’ve got a whole new bucket of stuff […]

Uber is betting big that data it’s collecting from its ground-based ride-hailing app will drive the emerging urban air taxi market, but while we’re waiting for the aircraft, beginning this summer, UberCopter will launch in limited round-trip service between downtown Manhattan and JFK Airport. The service will be provided by Part 135-operator HeliFlite using conventional […]

Embraer, though its EmbraerX “disruptive business subsidiary,” announced the eVTOL at today’s Uber Elevate Summit. The 10-motor electric VTOL concept promises urban mobility through vertical takeoff and landing capabilities and is ready for future autonomous flight. “As a market accelerator committed to developing solutions to transform life’s experiences, we have been combining human-centered design thinking […]

Honeywell Aerospace has announced that it will be partnering with Volocopter to jointly develop and test navigation and automatic landing systems for Volocopter’s electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxi. Honeywell says it will be bringing its autonomous sensing and flight technologies—including inertial measurement units and attitude heading reference solutions—to the table for the […]