Originally Posted by
Bravo73
And the announcement is… (drumroll, please)…
’WE’RE GETTING CLOSER.’
🤣
Not their most informative piece of publicity!
There seem to be a lot of companies that have very good cgi and marketing, but with claims that are hard to believe.
Slight thread drift, but I haven’t seen anything on PPRuNe about the Vertical VA-X4, a proposed 4-passenger, commercially certified and piloted VTOL air-taxi vehicle - Hill Helicopters do not seem to be the only ones with some pretty impressive claims.
https://vertical-aerospace.com/investors/
While they obviously have a lot of investment, and a highly qualified design team, a lot of their claims seem just about unbelievable to me.
“We have consistently developed our plans based on a piloted aircraft, as we expect that passengers and regulators alike will require a pilot in their vehicle for at least the next decade. With a pilot on board, we expect to need at least four passengers to make the economics work, meaning the aircraft will have to be at least 2,500 kilos or 5,000 lbs.”
Their design is for a 1 pilot plus 4 passenger seat aircraft. As they suggest they
“expect to need at least four passengers to make the economics work”, this seems to imply that they will have to have the aircraft at least full, if not more than full, for every trip . . .
“This readily available technology, coupled with our unique business model and partnership ecosystem, means that we are now able to build and operate our aircraft at an estimated cost of one dollar per passenger mile. At this level, we believe eVTOL will clearly be a mass market proposition, not a niche opportunity”
Will it really be a
“mass market proposition”? If it was, would the airspace system cope? Can a commercially piloted $1.6m aircraft really be operated profitably at $1/passenger mile?
“
The VA-X4 is going to be 100x quieter than a helicopter, 100x safer than a helicopter, zero carbon, and of course it’s going to be a fraction of the cost.” Elsewhere it quotes 1/5 the cost of an equivalent helicopter, so with a price per aircraft of $1.6m I presume they must mean operating costs, as it certainly is not equivalent to an $8m helicopter.
In fact, with a 100 mile range, I am not sure what their “
equivalent helicopter” might be.
Elsewhere they say “
15 dBa quieter” than an equivalent helicopter - I am not very good on dB - is that consistent with
“100x quieter” ?
“For key shorter missions, such as linking airports to city centres, the high vehicle efficiency means that we use only a small fraction of the battery energy, enabling rapid charging in ten minutes or less” If this is true, why hasn’t the electric car industry managed this yet?
“
On pilot training, the inherent benefits of electrically powered aircraft combined with our partnership with Honeywell provides a major advantage. Leveraging Honeywell’s ‘Simplified Vehicle Operations’ capabilities in flight controls and avionics (or cockpit displays), the VA-X4 will be incredibly simple and safe to fly and operate. All of this results in a pilot workload for standard FAA defined tasks that is reduced by 80% compared to existing commercial aircraft.”
So this is going to be incredibly simple to fly and operate, only 20% of the workload of a normal aircraft? Do they imply that pilots will be quicker and easier (and cheaper) to train and certify. Will there be a new category of licence for this simplified form of flying . . .
And as for “
100x safer” than a helicopter - in an aircraft with 4 x tilting rotor/propellers and 4 x folding rotors, an endurance to empty batteries of about 30-40 minutes (based on their claim of 100mile range at 200mph), what could possibly go wrong! What about weather/icing/air traffic delays etc.
They certainly seem to have a lot of investment (Microsoft/ American Airlines/Honeywell/Rolls Royce) and claim “up to” 1000 pre-orders (although I think “up to” can mean the same as ≤ , which includes 0 )
There seem to be quite a few of this type of design around - the Lilium 7-seater has a mere 36 ducted fans.
I wonder if any of them will ever become successful.