Australian eVTOL

[red750]

Long-range, box-wing eVTOL prototype begins flight testing down under

 

 

Australia's AMSL Aero has celebrated the first tethered test flight of its ultra-efficient Vertiia eVTOL aircraft. With its unique box wing formation, eight tilting propellers and five seats, it promises a 1,000 km (620-mile) range and speeds up to 300 km/h (180 mph).

 

 

 

 

           See story here.

 

 

 

 

 

[Carbon Canary]

I believe AMSL are based at Narromine - coincidentally (ironically) also the home of a flyable Wright’s Flyer.

[Student Pilot]

1000 k's at 300 kph 😁

[Ian]

On batteries only 250km. The 1000km is based upon some form of hydrogen cycle.

I'm not sure what bits are reality and what bits are aspirational or whether the range is calculated with or without a payload.

Hydrogen as a fuel is hard and "green" hydrogen is also also very hard. I might be wrong however I suspect that as an energy carrier it is mostly folly.

Take the case of Hydrogen production, solar and wind are intermittent, so you need to cycle/throttle your generation process, the only electrolysers which can be throttled are PEM electrolysers. However PEM electrolysers require iridium which is part of the platinum group and it one of the rarest commercially produced elements. Current production is only 7 tons a year and it is a very scarce resource. To provide a terrawatt of hydrogen generation would require about 27 years of current iridium production and the world economy would requires about 4 TW of continual electrical production. This doesn't include non-electrical energy flows which hydrogen is meant to replace. You could use other types of electrolysers however they need to be kept running which doesn't work with intermittent sources.

 

Hydrogen is a great fuel once you're in the air, it's weight per unit of energy is very good but production and logistics are difficult. Fossil fuel companies are hyping Hydrogen because they're the only possible suppliers from an economic perspective, but why not just use natural gas instead, it's cheap? Elon Musk chose that path for his rockets because H2 is hard and CH4 is easier and cheaper.

https://aviationweek.com/air-transport/aircraft-propulsion/can-aviation-use-liquified-natural-gas-reduce-its-carbon

 

But going down the Fossil fuel route still produces CO2 which is bad even though CH4 produces less.