aircraft RSS

teTra Aviation, an aircraft manufacturing startup based in Tokyo, Japan, won the $100,000 Disruptor Award at the FoFly personal flight contest last year.       The startup has now unveiled the exclusive, single-seat eVTOL aircraft, dubbed the Mk-5, at the week-long EAA AirVenture event at the Wittman Regional Airport in Wisconsin. The fully electric personal aircraft is designed to be safe, quiet, and easy to manufacture. Forged from aluminum and carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRP), the Mk-5 measures roughly 8.62 m (28.2 feet) wide, 6.15 m (20.2 ft) long, and 2.51 m (8.2 ft) high, and weighs around 488 kg when empty.   The aircraft...

    DHL and Eviation today announced a pretty big moment in the developing history of electric aviation and specifically electric cargo aviation. Starting later this year, DHL will begin testing a fleet of 12 electric cargo planes from Eviation’s sole current model dubbed “Alice.” Deliveries will begin in 2024.   AD   The Alice planes look almost identical, save for some missing windows and seats and an additional 100lbs capacity, to the passenger version of the Eviation Alice plane we’ve talked about in the past, amusingly calling it the “Tesla of Aviation.” It now boasts around 440NM of range or just over 500 miles...

JoeBen Bevirt has ducked the media spotlight—until now. He discusses how electric air taxis will make urban transport cleaner and cheaper. The most recognizable name in the emerging electrical vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) segment, JoeBen Bevirt, broke years-long silence yesterday during a webcast with the Washington Post.  It turns out he didn’t reveal any new details about his four-passenger electric aircraft or specifically where his company, Joby Aviation, is heading. He did, however, provide a general roadmap of how he thinks electric aviation will cause a transportation revolution.    Bevirt received Robb Report’s 2021 Best of the Best “One to Watch” award for his leadership and vision...

Electric flight times are getting longer as the technology improves Electric air taxis aren’t a real thing yet, but a host of well-financed startups are out to change that. Chief among them is Joby Aviation, an electric aviation company based in Northern California that just posted a noteworthy video of its six-rotor aircraft completing an impressive 150-mile flight. Granted, it doesn’t sound too impressive, but it’s actually among the longest flights ever performed by an electric aircraft. It’s equivalent to a trip between Seattle and Vancouver, or Los Angeles to San Diego — the type of regional trip conducted hundreds...

Self-driving cars are taking longer to come to market than initially predicted by industry insiders, as a New York Times article highlighted this week. Indeed, it turns out that having a complex, interconnected set of cameras, sensors, lidar, and software safely navigate a vehicle through busy streets is a lot harder than we thought it would be. What may not be as hard, though, is navigating the friendly—and relatively empty—skies. Google Ventures is betting on it, anyway: the venture capital investment arm of the search giant just co-led a $25 million funding round for Merlin Labs, a developer of autonomous flight technology that’s aiming to create a “truly autonomous digital pilot.”  ...