Airbus successfully conducted the first test of the prototype Vahana – all-electric aircraft with vertical take-off and landing. In the future, the unit plans to use as unmanned air taxis. The first flight was low and long. Flying vehicle rose to a height of five meters, held in the air for 53 seconds, then made a soft landing.
The company has previously announced plans to create a fleet of unmanned multimotored VTOL (aircraft with vertical takeoff and landing), which can be used as a flying taxi in busy ground traffic cities. The cost of its use will be comparable to the cost of an ordinary car or train. The development project of a prototype flying occurred in early 2016, and it is company A3 — daughter Airbus. Since then, the company has only provided superficial information.
Testing of full-scale flying tools, called Alpha One was supposed to take place before the end of 2017. The unit recently moved from California to the new test site in Oregon, where he took his tests. According to the developer, ready to fly flying taxi will be available by 2020. The prototype air taxi has a length of 6.2 meters width — 5.7 meters (wingspan) and height is 2.8 meters. Maximum takeoff weight is 745 pounds.
“Two years later, the Vahana of the conceptual sketch on a napkin turned into a full-scale aircraft, which has successfully completed its first flight,” commented Zach, Levering, one of the developers of the company.
“Our goal is to democratize personal transport, using the latest technologies such as electric motion, energy storage and machine vision,” added the engineer.
Earlier, the team Vahana said that, in addition to taxi VTOL may in the future serve as a platform of delivery, ambulance or search and rescue device.
The Airbus said that the test apparatus will now be moving in the direction of test hovering in the air and the ability to change the direction of flight.
Airbus conducted the first tests of pilotless flying taxi
Nikolai Khizhnyak