Electric Aircraft

eVTOL air-taxis could be the new efficient means of intercity travel with zero-emissions short flights. Whilst they may resemble helicopters, they could be far more cost effective and more environmentally friendly in the long run and are similar to aeroplanes in their rotor-enabled forward flight. With their electric propellors powered by batteries, new designs and innovations are broadening the market.

IDTechEx announces the availability of a new report, "Air Taxis: Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) Aircraft 2024-2044: Technologies, Players". This report is intended to help companies understand the exciting emerging urban air mobility (UAM) market.

Electraflyer has announced that it has passed crossover, meaning it now sells more battery-electric aircraft than polluting ones. Pipistrel sold over 100 battery-electric aircraft last year as they take over from its traditional offerings. Bye Aerospace does not even make conventional aircraft. With its Tesla-style approach, its order book exceeds 720 battery-electric aircraft evenly split between two and four-seaters. As the IDTechEx report, "Manned Electric Aircraft: Smart City and Regional 2021-2041" points out, this has caught Cessna, Cirrus and Piper by surprise.

Air taxi operators are unfazed by the 200 or so organizations designing vertical take-off electric aircraft. Follow the economics and the orders not the fluid investments from people seeking the next Tesla. Those getting the huge investments often lack significant orders.

The term distributed propulsion (DP) primarily refers to a fundamentally new form of wing that combines aerodynamics with thrust and zero emissions, resulting in numerous benefits.

The replacement of aircraft makers will be brutal - no not Airbus and Boeing, the other big names, starting with those making light aircraft, then those making regional aircraft. Stuck in the past, these cannot make what is now needed.

Wednesday 19 May 2021 - The webinar looks at everything manned going electric from piloted freight to passengers flown without a pilot. From conventional takeoff and landing eCTOL to the glamorous eVTOL projects awash with billions of dollars of investment, there are hybrid, fuel cell and retrofit opportunities.

In 2017, after four years of setbacks and crashes, Alphabet shut its project flying solar-powered fixed-wing drones in the upper atmosphere to beam the internet to those cut-off. They have now ended their upper-atmosphere balloon version as well.

IDTechEx's recent market research report on Drones and their associated technologies predicts the drone market to be over $22Bn by 2041.