Kittyhawk winds down Flyer Project to ‘double down’ on its Heaviside eVTOL aircraft

Kit­ty­hawk is to wind­ing down its Fly­er per­son­al VTOL Project and focus all its efforts on its main eVTOL air­craft, Heav­i­side.

Fly­er was designed to give indi­vid­u­als the abil­i­ty to expe­ri­ence what it feels like to glide above the water. The sin­gle-seater vehi­cle was pow­ered by 10 inde­pen­dent lift fans and oper­at­ed between 3ft and 10ft off the water. Fly­er trav­elled more than over 25,000 times.

Pres­i­dent of Fly­er, Alex Roet­ter, and Kit­ty­hawk CEO Sebas­t­ian Thrun explained their deci­sion in a blog post enti­tled ‘Our Next Chap­ter’, which was post­ed on the com­pa­ny’s web­site yes­ter­day (Wednes­day).

They wrote: “Today, we are wind­ing down the Fly­er project. We have learned what we need­ed from it  —  things like vehi­cle design and test­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing air­craft, and most of all, how humans would expe­ri­ence eVTOL.

“We are proud to have built the first elec­tri­cal­ly-pow­ered VTOL air­craft in the world flown by non-pilots. Just as with our ear­li­er Cora air­craft, Fly­er is clear­ly a mile­stone in the his­to­ry of Kit­ty­hawk and eVTOL vehi­cles.

“Since Fly­er began, more pow­er­ful eVTOL vehi­cles have been invent­ed, such as our own Heav­i­side plane, which has a range of 100 miles, speeds of up to 180 mph, and the abil­i­ty to fly over cities. Going for­ward, we are dou­bling down on Heav­i­side as our pri­ma­ry plat­form. But we would nev­er have got­ten here with­out launch­ing and learn­ing from Fly­er, and the amaz­ing team of peo­ple who built and oper­at­ed it.

“We are incred­i­bly proud of the Fly­er team and what it has accom­plished. Fly­er stands out as one of our most ambi­tious bets. While the vehi­cles them­selves will now retire, the Fly­er lega­cy will live on as we con­tin­ue on our quest to free the world from traf­fic!”

Kit­ty­hawk has said the Heav­i­side is designed to be fast, small and exceed­ing­ly qui­et — tak­ing advan­tage of new pos­si­bil­i­ties to free peo­ple from traf­fic.

It is rough­ly 100 times qui­eter than a reg­u­lar heli­copter and the com­pa­ny has said it can trav­el from San Jose to San Fran­cis­co in 15 min­utes, using less than half the ener­gy of a car.

Click on the video below to watch a clip of the Heav­i­side eVTOL.