Engineering news
The Kitty Hawk Flyer, funded by Google’s co-founder Larry Page, has taken to the skies for the first time, and should be available for sale by the end of the year. And an on-demand air taxi prototype developed by German start-up firm Lilium has recently completed its maiden flight over Bavaria. The two-seater Eagle jet managed to perform a mid-air transition from hover mode to wing-borne forward flight.
But there’s more. Dutch firm Pal-V has just announced that its automobile-gyroplane hybrid Liberty (pictured) is going into production later this year, and should be available to customers in 2018. The three-wheeled, 4m vehicle – which has been in development since 2008 – can switch between drive and fly mode, using a retractable wind-powered rotor and propeller on top that unfolds for lift. Made from composite materials, the vehicle is equipped with two 230hp gasoline engines and a Semi-Automatic Conversion System to switch between drive and fly modes within five minutes.
The company aims to ensure that its creation complies with European and US flight and road regulations, claiming that half of the development costs went towards this. The vehicle is being audited by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), but not everyone is sure that it will pass. “As with any new design concept, this hybrid aircraft will need to be type-approved by the EASA before it can fly in European airspace, and this can be a lengthy process,” Richard Taylor, a Civil Aviation Authority spokesman, told PE. “The manufacturer will need to work closely with EASA to ensure the design does have the potential to be granted a type certificate. Safety will of course always be the priority.”
Pal-V also plans to install autonomous technology in its vehicle within a decade.
There are many other efforts under way to produce flying cars. The US-Slovakia collaboration Aeromobil is taking pre-orders for the limited first-edition run of its flying car, priced at £1 million. And Dubai is planning to launch flying taxis as early as July. Meanwhile, Singapore is gearing up to accommodate a network of flying taxis by 2030. The Singaporean government is in talks with companies to start trials on passenger-carrying drones, with Scorpion from the Russian start-up firm Hoversurf being the front-runner.
Prompted by constraints on the amount of available land, the flying taxis are a move towards revamping Singapore’s transport system, which is also planned to have driverless pods in the near future.