Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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Time_Traveller
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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Flying cars will be a reality by 2030, says Hyundai’s Europe chief
Tue 29 Jun 2021

Flying cars will be a reality in cities around the globe by the end of this decade, according to a leading car manufacturer, and will help to reduce congestion and cut vehicle emissions.

Michael Cole, the chief executive of the European operations of South Korean carmarker Hyundai, said the firm had made some “very significant investments” in urban air mobility, adding: “We believe it really is part of the future”.

Cole conceded: “There’s some time before we can really get this off the ground.

“We think that by the latter part of this decade certainly, urban air mobility will offer great opportunity to free up congestion in cities, to help with emissions, whether that’s intra-city mobility in the air or whether it’s even between cities.”

He told a conference of industry group Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders: “It’s part of our future solution of offering innovative, smart mobility solutions.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... rope-chief
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weatheriscool
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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Flying car completes test flight between airports

By Zoe Kleinman

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57651843
2 hours ago

A prototype flying car has completed a 35-minute flight between international airports in Nitra and Bratislava, Slovakia.

The hybrid car-aircraft, AirCar, is equipped with a BMW engine and runs on regular petrol-pump fuel.

Its creator, Prof Stefan Klein, said it could fly about 1,000km (600 miles), at a height of 8,200ft (2,500m), and had clocked up 40 hours in the air so far.

It takes two minutes and 15 seconds to transform from car into aircraft.
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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Heaviside becomes fourth eVTOL to receive military airworthiness approval
By Loz Blain
July 12, 2021

America's technological leadership is now viewed as an urgent matter of national security, and to make sure the country keeps its edge, the US Military is mustering its impressive resources to accelerate development on a range of commercial tech products that could keep the USA ahead of the game.

The AFWERX Prime programs are designed explicitly to "prime" and accelerate emerging commercial markets, using military missions and equities, as well as test infrastructure, certification authorities, inter-agency relationships and early operational use cases.
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/kitty-haw ... orthiness/
weatheriscool
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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Jetpack Aviation's flying motorcycle prototype aces first tests
By Loz Blain
July 19, 2021

After spending 18 months building an entirely new form of flight control software, California's Jetpack Aviation has completed flight testing on its first prototype of the Speeder, a jet turbine-powered flying motorcycle. Top speeds on the final version will be rather epic.

When we last caught up with David Mayman, inventor, madman and one of the world's very few expert jetpack pilots, he was starting work on a new personal flight device very different to anything else on the market. The Speeder would be a very small VTOL aircraft, powered by the same extremely powerful miniature jet turbines Mayman has been flying his jetpacks around on. In this case, it would carry much higher loads, including up to two people, at higher speeds, and it'd also be much quicker and easier to deploy than a jetpack – you'd just hop on and fly.
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/flying-mo ... n-speeder/
weatheriscool
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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Urban eVTOL announces Leo, a 250-mph hypercar for the skies
By Loz Blain
August 05, 2021
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/urban-evt ... -hypercar/
An electric propulsion specialist and a supercar designer have partnered up on an eye-catching three-seat eVTOL, claiming 250-mph (400 km/h) top speeds and extraordinary 300-mile (483-km) range figures, as well as some extreme flight dynamics and some nifty ideas.

Pete Bitar has been working on vertical propulsion systems for decades now. He's got a DARPA contract to develop his electric jetpack designs, his Verticycle is a competitor in the GoFly personal flight challenge, and he's just won one of nine NASA "Future-Scaping Our Skies" awards for his work on ground infrastructure and air traffic control for the coming eVTOL age.

Now he's partnered up with automotive designer Carlos Salaff to start an eVTOL company. Salaff was behind the outrageous Mazda Furai concept, and has in more recent years been showing his own outrageous coach-built creations at events such as Pebble Beach.
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raklian
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This eVTOL Is Styled Like a Flying Sports Car That Parks in Your Garage


Image

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A new concept from Urban eVTOL, the Leo isn’t concerned about copter v. jet—it wants to be like a car. It measures 20 feet by 10 feet, meaning it will fit in most two-car garages. And it has an automotive-style interior, with an easy-to-learn semi-autonomous fly-by-wire control system.

The car-like qualities are far from the only innovations. Propulsion comes via a unique electric jetpack design built by co-founder Pete Bitar’s Electric Jet Aircraft. The system uses five clusters of electrically powered jet turbines. Four of the clusters provide lift and the fifth pushes the Leo forward.

Each cluster works in unison to emulate a single rotor, but the multiple jets per cluster provide safety through redundancy. The turbines’ rotors are housed within the craft’s body, which provides additional safety. Plus it looks pretty damn cool. The system has performed well in tethered test flight and Urban Evtol projects a top speed of 250 mph with one hour of flight time.

Salaff says the plan calls for experimental certification in 2023 and full arrival on the market in 2026.


https://robbreport.com/motors/aviation/ ... 234629439/


Hmmm.... it looks more and more like a flying car we've always wanted.
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weatheriscool
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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US Air Force set to showcase 35 high-speed VTOL aircraft concepts
By Loz Blain
August 24, 2021
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/afwerx-hi ... -showcase/

Forget your friendly little electric air taxis. The US Air Force wants to take things up a notch with a new generation of high-speed vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. Thirty five designs are about to be presented, here's a sneak peek at the ones we know.

AFWERX is a US Air Force program first announced in 2017, designed to encourage a culture of innovation in the service, both by promoting interesting ideas raised internally and by getting involved with the entrepreneurial tech sector to draw in and fast-track the best ideas in the civilian world as well. It's not just to get sweet new gadgets into the field; America's national security depends on a thriving commercial technology sector, and one of AFWERX's aims is to give US companies a leg-up on development where it's prudent.

AFWERX put the call out in June for companies to make submissions on a new High-Speed VTOL (HSVTOL) challenge. Its current VTOL aircraft get plenty of use thanks to their runway-free convenience and operational flexibility, but its most common helicopter, the Sikorsky HH-60 Pave Hawk, is limited to a speed of 193 knots (222 mph, 357 km/h), due to retreating blade stall.
weatheriscool
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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Lilium releases 5th-gen eVTOL flight test footage with sound
By Loz Blain
September 13, 2021
Lilium's eVTOL is vastly different to anything else in the air taxi world, using 36 small ducted fans in place of larger open rotors. This has advantages and disadvantages, which we've discussed in detail before. Essentially, smaller fans make for vastly lower hover efficiency, but the company says they create less drag than large rotors in forward flight, improving efficiency over longer range flights.

Lilium also says they'll make these aircraft much easier to scale up to 15 seats and beyond without losing the ability to land on standard helipads.
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/lilium-evtol-noise/
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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First Flying Car Passes Safety Test In Japan, Could Be On-Sale By 2025
https://www.iflscience.com/technology/f ... HfmhRy_Mgk
04 Nov 2021, 16:35
A flying car has gained the first safety certificate issued by Japan, allowing them to commercialize their eVTOL vehicles as soon as 2025. This marks the first flying car to reach this stage in Japan, and could pave the way for this decade to be the decade of flying cars.

SkyDrive’s eVTOL electric flying car concept is currently represented by the SD-03, which made a successful manned flight demonstration in August 2020. Carrying just a single seat, the SD-03 is powered by eight propellers in a quadcopter formation and has a range of around 10 minutes flight time, reaching top speeds of 30 miles per hour (48 kilometers per hour). During the world debut, a pilot took off vertically before flying around a test area and smoothly landing back down.
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