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Autoflight announces its V400 eVTOL and outlines future product roadmap

eVTOL devel­op­er Aut­oflight has unveiled its V400 ‘Alba­tross’ air­craft for air logis­tics, as well as details about its prod­uct roadmap which includes con­cepts for Urban Air Mobil­i­ty.

The com­pa­ny made the announce­ment at the 2020 World UAV Con­fer­ence yes­ter­day (Sun­day), and said the V400 range will have two mod­els — one pow­ered by elec­tric and the oth­er as a hybrid, with both hav­ing a MTOW of 400kg and 100kg pay­load capac­i­ty.

With a full pay­load, the elec­tric V400 will have a range of 300km, while the hybrid-pow­ered ver­sion will be able to trav­el up to 1,000km. Aut­oflight says the V400 now offers the longest range and biggest pay­load in Chi­na, and it has already con­struct­ed a pro­to­type with the goal of com­plet­ing a maid­en flight by the end of the year.

In a press release, the com­pa­ny said: “The V400 uses lift sur­face and cruis­ing motors for cruis­ing, and eight sets of sep­a­rate motors for ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing. The full elec­tric mod­el uses two cruis­ing motors in push-pull con­fig­u­ra­tion, while the hybrid mod­el uses one com­bus­tion engine at the rear for cruis­ing.

“The V400 adopts canard lay­out to ensure high­er lift-to-drag ratio and stall-resis­tant aero­dy­nam­ic per­for­mance and its air­frame is made with high strength car­bon fibre.” 

To ensure safe­ty, the V400 has been equipped with an in-house designed flight con­trol sys­tem with mul­ti­ple redun­dan­cy, mul­ti­ple sen­sors and radar to assist self-con­trolled take­off and land­ing, and offers an option for a whole air­frame para­chute.

With its ded­i­cat­ed flight con­trol sys­tem and sense-and-avoid sys­tem, the V400 can fly ful­ly autonomous­ly and also has inte­grat­ed 4G and 5G mobile net­work func­tion for mul­ti-chan­nel com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

Aut­oflight says the V400 is ide­al for var­i­ous air trans­porta­tion appli­ca­tions, such as express deliv­ery, media sup­plies, dis­as­ter relief and first response — espe­cial­ly in haz­ardous and tough ter­rains such as moun­tains and islands.

Cred­it Aut­oflight

And the com­pa­ny plans to devel­op eVTOL prod­ucts for pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing use in the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) mar­ket, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of fel­low Chi­nese com­pa­ny EHang — which has already begun car­ry­ing out flight tests and tri­al logis­tics oper­a­tions across the coun­try.

The founder of Aut­oflight, Tian Yu, has been devel­op­ing elec­tric air­planes for over a decade and designed and built sev­er­al elec­tric air­planes, includ­ing the E430 two-seat elec­tric air­plane which was cer­ti­fied by the Ger­man sports avi­a­tion admin­is­tra­tive enti­ty DULV in in Novem­ber 2017.

Yu was also the founder of Yuneec, the pre­de­ces­sor of Aut­oflight, which was a world leader in con­sumer drones and the man­u­fac­tur­er of e‑Spyder sin­gle-seat elec­tric ultra­light and E430 two-seat elec­tric ultra­light which first flew in June 2009. 

Aut­oflight pre­sent­ed the V600 two-seat eVTOL pro­to­type in April 2019 at AERO Expo in Friedrichshafen, Ger­many and the V1000 eVTOL car­go drone pro­to­type in Novem­ber at e‑Flight-Forum in Chi­na.

It adds: “We believe that the research, design, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and mass pro­duc­tion of eVTOL with large pay­load capac­i­ty are fun­da­men­tal to the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the UAM vision. In this sense, V400 is not only the pre­sen­ta­tion of Autoflight’s tech­no­log­i­cal capa­bil­i­ty, but also is one step clos­er to the vision of pas­sen­ger car­ry­ing autonomous flight togeth­er with our part­ners and all the play­ers around the world mak­ing efforts towards this goal.”

Aut­oflight spe­cialis­es in R&D of autonomous flight, eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy and air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ing. Its head­quar­ters are in Shang­hai and R&D facil­i­ties have been set up in Munich, Ger­many and Shen­zhen, Chi­na.

As of today, the com­pa­ny has designed and deliv­ered sev­er­al mis­sion-spe­cif­ic eVTOL prod­ucts for clients, includ­ing the V50 ‘White Shark’ which set a flight record of more than 6 hours ear­li­er this year, and the F240 fire­fight­ing mul­ti­copter which can car­ry up to 100kg fire retar­dant. 

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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