Zeva is very serious about bringing this tail-sit eVTOL flying saucer to the market as a single-person air taxi. If you can overcome the idea of ​​head-down, face-down and superman style flying over the city, there are some interesting advantages.

In the past five or six years, we have seen many different eVTOL designs, but the industry has been trying to find the curve ball to throw at us, and we are still fascinated by the creativity that this emerging market inspires. I admit that the first time I saw Zeva's carbon fiber UFO design, it was a bit contrived niche.

Basically, Zeva Zero is a large carbon fiber disk with a diameter of about 8 feet (2.4 m) and a total weight of 700 pounds (317 kg). There is a human-sized cavity in the middle, and the clear part allows you to see it. There are two propulsion compartments at the front and two at the rear. Each engine compartment has two coaxially installed electric pillars.

The battery—about 20 kWh in the first prototype and 25 kWh in the first planned production model—will be located on the side of the disc, divided into many different packages. These battery packs will be isolated from each other in a double-walled carbon box. In the event of a battery fire, the box will be continuously monitored and be able to discharge heat and toxic gases out of the aircraft. Another partition separates the battery area from the passenger compartment.

When the aircraft is at the tail and tilted slightly forward, you can enter the aircraft through the compound folding hatch device on the back. You put your chest and abdomen on it, close the hatch behind you, and you can fly. It will take off vertically and then transition to horizontal cruise mode in about 20 seconds, in which the entire fuselage disc becomes a lift-generating wing.

The top struts of each nacelle are optimized for VTOL and hovering, and the lower struts have higher pitch blades and are optimized for cruising at faster airspeeds. At a certain speed, the top pillar will be stopped, unlocked and allowed to fold flat on the cabin to minimize resistance.

Then, you drive Superman to a destination up to 50 miles (80 kilometers) away at a speed of up to 160 mph (257 km/h). At this point, it will slow down, tilt its nose up, and activate those tops to hover again. Props and enter the tail seat to land, allowing you to stand up again.

Tibbits describes the early version as "optional driving", using a fairly standard drone-style control device that will combine your input with other information from cameras and sensors around the aircraft before making a decision What exactly needs to happen to the electric motor. Of course, the ultimate goal is to let these things run autonomously.

Why design such an airplane? "Well, keep it simple," Tibitz smiled. "I think the best part Elon Musk said recently is no part. I like it. The fewer moving parts, the more reliable it is. This particular design comes from our participation in the Boeing-sponsored GoFly award design conference. One of them The requirement is that the entire aircraft must be installed in an eight and a half feet (2.6 meters) sphere, and we hope to maximize the wing area in this space.

"But I think the result is an interesting product, suitable for first responders, search and rescue, heat extraction, resupply... We have civilian applications and Ministry of Defense applications, and people are very excited about it. So yes, we are tossing where others are tossing, but my consideration is that these things are needed where they can be used directly, not in the urban environment. That is the last place we put them, once we've got the data Thousand hours.

“We see great interest in rural areas, especially in countries like Indonesia. They have 17,000 islands, many of which don’t have much infrastructure at all, and they like the idea of ​​being able to move people like this. 70-We have 3 % Of people commute alone, so we think our first car was designed for one person-160 miles per hour with a range of 50 miles? This opens up a lot of possibilities."

Therefore, the mechanical structure of Zeva will be very simple-more or less just an octocopter with more intelligent flight dynamics and large cruise wings. Tibbits said that mass manufacturing is also easy: "We can basically stamp out composite fuselage parts with large stamping machines," he said. Even before any economies of scale, his team estimated that the price per piece was about $250,000. This means that the air taxi service can buy 20 of them at the price of one of the five or six larger seats.

But perhaps its main advantage lies in its size. "We can park six to seven such cars in the same space where you need to park Joby," Tibbits said. "First responders can park a few in the garage and prepare to fly. The rich can put them on their yachts as an effective way to travel between the ship and the shore without maintaining the helicopter. We can They land in a smaller space. We can take off and land in dead ends or other places with a wingspan of up to 35 feet (10.6 meters)."

The Zeva team is flying a 1/8 scale model at all stages of the flight. It is indeed a lively little guy, as shown in the video below.

Now, the company has built a full-scale prototype, which is flying on the tether "almost every day" at this time, and should be able to break off the tether and is ready to start the transition in the remote control configuration in "three to four weeks" test. Tibitz said that manned flights may occur in "three to six months, or even less. Once we prove that the flight is safe, we will be classified as experimental aircraft, in this case, we can Start the manned flight. Now, I definitely don’t want this. We need to run on the machine for hundreds of hours to put people in it, and we also need to install and rigorously test the ballistic recovery parachute."

In fact, Tibbits said that Zeva aircraft can easily be packaged in a pre-certified form and sold as experimental aircraft to private pilot license holders. "This idea is in our minds, but I don't know how it will work," he said. "We don't want to focus on business and first responders. These are important and make good use of this technology."

If the Zero aircraft cannot raise your eyebrows to the maximum safe height, then check out Zeva’s SkyDock concept, which allows you to park the aircraft directly on the window of the 35th floor office, park it like a barnacle, and walk in directly An extended runway.

"We think that when UAM space comes into play, the roof will become very expensive," Tibbits said. "Thousand-pound gorillas will get in early and get all the good roof leases and dominate these roofs through their services. Once everyone has access to these things, it won't work. We will need one more parking space. We I don’t know how it will work in real life, but I believe it will happen."

Will they provide a free brown panty dispenser? "I mean, it's a saying, but on the other hand, who doesn't want Batman to leave the side of the building?" Tibitt laughed. In all fairness, anyone who is unable to step on a 1,000-foot springboard may struggle with a face-down flying position anyway. Patients with vertigo do not need to apply, but Tibbits points out that those who take cojones face down on a 160 mph flying saucer will get a second-to-none view.

Zeva is currently partially self-funded. In a round of investment from family and friends, Tibbits said that he has opened the door to small investors through the equity crowdfunding platform StartEngine. More prototypes will be built and tested in the next step, with a view to first being put on the market through the first responder, search and rescue and defense markets. "We will turn to the consumer market when we are fully autonomous," Tibbits said.

Oddly, he doesn't seem to be intimidated by the challenges of commercial certification. Some organizations believe that early eVTOL aircraft hoping to join the air taxi market will cost up to $1 billion. "I have two superpowers: persistence and the ability to run programs with a very limited budget," Tibitt said. "We brought a person, the former Boeing Company, whose expertise is in flight testing and certification."

"Our advantage is that we are not the first or second to do this," he continued. “So, to some extent, we will be able to take advantage of Joby and Beta etc. I think certification will be expensive and time-consuming, but I don’t think it will reach the $1 billion category. Having said that, we do A lot of money needs to be raised to achieve this."

This will be an uphill battle, but we are very happy to hear about the development of this small electric UFO. In terms of instinctive flight experience, it is hard to beat, and the small prototype looks so fast and agile that it is easy to imagine the potential of Zero as a kind of sporty VTOL for a racer. We wish the team good luck and make it a reality.

Check out the video below.