Courtesy of electrrek, news from China:
Just a few months after setting a world record for the longest flight by an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, AutoFlight has delivered another world first. The company just shared footage of it showing off not one but three of its Prosperity I prototypes flying at once, and it looks awesome. Check out the full video below…
The three generations of eVTOL took to the air together and flew for about 42 minutes in total at different altitudes and durations. The top speed reached was 230 km/h (143 mph)…
The three aircraft flew at different heights and for different durations. The earliest iteration of Prosperity flew at an altitude of 80m and covered 28km in 12 minutes, the next flew at an altitude of 100m covering 91km in 35 minutes and the latest model covered 120km in 42 minutes achieving an altitude of 120m. All three aircraft transitioned in and out of horizontal and vertical flight whilst in formation
AutoFlight completes another first in eVTOL Airtaxis by flying three simultaneously [Video]
120km is roughly the distance from Liverpool to Douglas. Belfast is about 100km away, and Dublin is roughly 150km away.
Being able to fly electric vehicles these distances offers huge and obvious potential opportunities to the Isle of Man. As I’ve been saying for a couple of years now, it is sad that the Isle of Man Government refuses to take action to make the Isle of Man more attractive to research and development for this sort of vehicle.
The Isle of Man has an opportunity to be a world leader in this technology, and it would offer significant benefits to our community: it would improve resilience to have a variety of transport technologies able to serve our island. It would allow us to not only reduce our emissions, but reduce the world’s emissions – going beyond “net zero”.
And finally, because we are an island, we’re going to have an on-going need for aviation in the long-term, as land transport to our island is simply too slow.
