Flight
No vision of the future is complete without flying cars. Now aerospace firm Airbus is looking to deliver on the longstanding promise—and soon. The company's Vahana project looks to start testing as soon as this year.
Airbus has announced that it is actively pursuing a self-piloted flying vehicle platform for individual passenger and cargo transport called "Vahana."
"We believe that global demand for this category of aircraft can support fleets of millions of vehicles worldwide."
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The company formed a division called Urban Air Mobility last year that is exploring concepts such as a vehicle to transport individuals or a helicopter-style vehicle that can carry multiple riders.Flight tests of the first vehicle prototype are slated for the end of 2017. As ambitious as that sounds, Rodin Lyasoff, CEO of A^3, the company’s advanced projects and partnerships organization, insists that it is feasible.
“Many of the technologies needed, such as batteries, motors and avionics are most of the way there,” Lyasoff explains. Vahana also requires reliable sense-and-avoid technology. While this is just starting to be introduced in cars, no mature airborne solutions currently exist. “That’s one of the bigger challenges we aim to resolve as early as possible,” says Lyasoff.
Transport service providers are one target group for such vehicles. The system could operate similarly to car-sharing applications, with the use of smartphones to book a vehicle. “We believe that global demand for this category of aircraft can support fleets of millions of vehicles worldwide,” estimates Lyasoff.
Scaling up the manufacturing and development of the project should see costs go down, projects Airbus. Lyasoff states, “In as little as ten years, we could have products on the market that revolutionise urban travel for millions of people.” The project’s team of internal and external developers and partners have already agreed on a vehicle design and is beginning to build and test vehicle subsystems.
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