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Airspeeder confirms start of production version of Mk3 flying racing car and shares its technical specifications

The pro­duc­tion ver­sion of Air­speed­er’s Mk3 — the world’s first full-scale and func­tion­al elec­tric fly­ing rac­ing car, is now being cre­at­ed, with the com­pa­ny shar­ing its tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions ahead of remote­ly pilot­ed races start­ing lat­er this year.

The Mk3 rac­ing pro­to­type was unveiled at Good­wood Speed Week in 2019 and Alau­da Aero­nau­tics, sis­ter-com­pa­ny to Air­speed­er, is cur­rent­ly build­ing ten of these vehi­cles at the sport’s tech­ni­cal head­quar­ters in Ade­laide, South Aus­tralia, with races set to take place on three con­ti­nents.

Matthew Pear­son, Founder, Air­speed­er and Alau­da Aero­nau­tics, said: “Some of the very first Mer­cedes, Bent­leys and Renaults were rac­ing cars. The pio­neers of these mar­ques knew that in order to advance a mobil­i­ty rev­o­lu­tion, they must build their machines for rac­ing.

“At Air­speed­er, we proud­ly echo that phi­los­o­phy. To accel­er­ate the arrival of advanced air mobil­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy we must lever­age sport­ing com­pe­ti­tion. The Air­speed­er Mk3 is the result of years of engi­neer­ing, test­ing and devel­op­ment with the pure pur­pose of cre­at­ing the ulti­mate per­for­mance elec­tric fly­ing car.”

DESIGN

In con­ceiv­ing the form of the world’s first elec­tric fly­ing rac­ing car, Air­speed­er’s Head of Design Felix Pier­ron was free to cre­ate an entire­ly new aes­thet­ic expres­sion of the future of advanced air mobil­i­ty. 

His vision rep­re­sents the mar­riage of an F1 car, a fight­er jet and heli­copter. When crewed rac­ing begins from 2022, the pilot will sit in the cock­pit in the same man­ner a dri­ver is placed in a mod­ern For­mu­la 1 car.

The upcom­ing uncrewed series will do much to teach Felix and the wider engi­neer­ing team about the dynam­ics of these craft and will serve as the per­fect prov­ing ground for what Air­speed­er promis­es to be ‘the most pro­gres­sive and enter­tain­ing form of motor­sport in the world’. 

Per­ron said: “This is pure inno­va­tion. We are not con­strained by four wheels or a square frame. We are lead­ing an entire­ly new aes­thet­ic; rac­ing fly­ing vehi­cles. It will take at least a cen­tu­ry to define an era as we are today. I am very proud to ful­fil my respon­si­bil­i­ty of mak­ing machines that are as beau­ti­ful as they are pur­pose­ful.” 

PERFORMANCE

At max­i­mum pow­er, the Mk3 remote­ly-pilot­ed elec­tric fly­ing rac­ing car deliv­ers 320kW and with­out a pilot weighs just 130kg. It can lift a weight of more than 80kg, prov­ing the via­bil­i­ty of the pow­er­train for pilot­ed races. Accel­er­a­tion from 0–62mph takes just 2.8 sec­onds and the Speed­er can climb to 500m. 

The Mk3 has a thrust-to-weight ratio of 3.5, exceed­ing that of an F‑15E Strike Eagle, which has a ratio of 1.2. The rapid hair­pin turn­ing poten­tial achieved through an octo­copter for­mat has been com­pared to that of a For­mu­la 1 car, gen­er­at­ing up to 5Gs, with the added capa­bil­i­ty to manoeu­vre ver­ti­cal­ly. 

Bat­ter­ies have been re-designed ver­sus the pre­vi­ous iter­a­tion of the Air­speed­er to have 90 per cent more capac­i­ty with only a 50 per cent increase in weight. Pow­er deliv­ery pro­files can be changed by ground-crews to respond to the dif­fer­ent require­ments of the elec­tron­i­cal­ly gov­erned sky-tracks that Air­speed­er pilots will fol­low.

For exam­ple, a lay­out that demands rapid maneu­vers through sharp turns and ascents will require a dif­fer­ent pow­er deliv­ery curve from those that demand out­right straight-line speed.

Every Air­speed­er includes rapid pit stops. To facil­i­tate this, Alauda’s engi­neers have devel­oped an inno­v­a­tive ‘slide and lock’ sys­tem for the rapid removal and replace­ment of bat­ter­ies when on the ground.

This tech­nol­o­gy debuts on the Mk3. Intense inter­nal com­pe­ti­tion between in-house pit crews has dri­ven the pit­stop time down to just 14 sec­onds, which is entire­ly com­pat­i­ble with any form of ground-based lega­cy motor­sport. This is expect­ed to con­tin­ue to fall. For con­text, a For­mu­la 1 pit­stop used to take more than a minute. 

SAFETY

Dur­ing flights, all sys­tems are mon­i­tored on the ground through state-of-the-art teleme­try. This means ground­crew are imme­di­ate­ly aware of issues and can take appro­pri­ate action to bring the craft to ground under con­trol. 

The octo­copter lay­out ensures sta­bil­i­ty in the event of rotor fail­ure or break­age, while the car­bon fibre struc­ture of the Speed­er has been engi­neered for over­all struc­tur­al integri­ty. 

The Mk3, which will be oper­at­ed by a remote oper­a­tor from the ground, fea­tures a suite of tech­nolo­gies includ­ing LiDAR and Radar col­li­sion avoid­ance sys­tems that cre­ate a ‘vir­tu­al force­field’ around the craft to ensure close, but ulti­mate­ly safe rac­ing.

DRIVEN BY DATA:

Ter­abytes of data from sen­sors with­in every area of the Speeder’s archi­tec­ture is drawn over any test­ing or rac­ing cycle. This means on-the-ground pit crews can con­stant­ly analyse and react to even the small­est vari­ance in per­for­mance.

From a rac­ing per­spec­tive, this dic­tates strat­e­gy and pilot approach and in over­all tech­ni­cal terms, allows engi­neers to under­stand details like aero­dy­nam­ic per­for­mance and even adjust pro­peller set­tings in accor­dance with Speed­er behav­iour in a mul­ti­tude of con­di­tions. 

Air­speed­er works with glob­al cyber pro­tec­tion leader Acro­nis and their deliv­ery part­ner Teknov8 to secure this data.

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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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