Airspeeder introduces world’s first electric flying car racing pilots, as preparations continue for new EXA series later this year

Fol­low­ing on from the suc­cess of its his­toric drag race last year, Air­speed­er has announced the first three pilots who will be part of the EXA rac­ing series planned for lat­er this year.

More than 1,500 indi­vid­u­als applied to become pio­neers as the world’s first elec­tric fly­ing car rac­ing pilots and after a rig­or­ous process, Emi­ly Dug­gan, Aus­trali­a’s most suc­cess­ful female dri­ver, mul­ti-blade pilot Zephatali Walsh and FPV drone pilot Fabio Tis­chler, have been cho­sen.

They will now under­go a rig­or­ous process of train­ing and devel­op­ment, which will include the log­ging of more than 2,000 col­lec­tive hours in the Alau­da Aero­nau­tics 6‑DoF VR sim­u­la­tor. This will mim­ic an Mk4 cir­cuit race with­in an XR envi­ron­ment. Through their train­ing pro­grammes and the races, they will mas­ter the dynam­ics of the rac­ing vehi­cle with the same thrust-to-weight ratio as an F16 fight­er jet, but with the added abil­i­ty to per­form rapid F1 car-style hair­pin turns.

Alauda’s engi­neers and its tech­ni­cal col­lab­o­ra­tors includ­ing Tel­stra, AWS and NVIDIA, pilots will stress-test the Mk3 and Mk4 vehi­cles inside Unre­al Engine to sim­u­late rac­ing. A sys­tems-based approach to safe­ty inte­grat­ing attest LiDAR and RADAR sys­tems in a suite of tech­nolo­gies termed the ‘Vir­tu­al Force Field’ will free the pilots to com­pete in blade-to-blade prox­im­i­ty with­out the risk of col­lid­ing.  

Matt Pear­son, Founder of Air­speed­er and Alau­da, said: “This is the start of a new gen­er­a­tion of motor­sport led by some of the most tal­ent­ed and dynam­ic com­peti­tors from a wide range of motor­sport and advanced air mobil­i­ty back­grounds. This is just the begin­ning and we can­not wait to see Emi­ly, Zephatali and Fabio plot a course to vic­to­ry in the world’s first remote­ly pilot­ed fly­ing car rac­ing series.

“Elec­tric fly­ing car rac­ing is the most excit­ing and pro­gres­sive form of motor­sport in the world. We have been proud to show the poten­tial of our Speed­ers in test set­tings but now is the time to get down to the seri­ous busi­ness of pure sport­ing com­pe­ti­tion. Our first intake select­ed from the thou­sands of appli­cants reflects the breadth of back­grounds elec­tric fly­ing car rac­ers will come from.” 

It was in June 2019, Pear­son stood at the Agili­ty Prime gath­er­ing of the world elite civ­il and mil­i­tary pilots and announced an open invi­ta­tion to pilots. This drew the widest tal­ent pool ever assem­bled to a new form of motor­sport.

Thou­sands of indi­vid­u­als from across the world drawn from avi­a­tion, rac­ing, per­for­mance auto­mo­tive, UAM fly­ing and even eSports answered the call to make his­to­ry as the world’s first elec­tric fly­ing car pilots.  

An exhaus­tive process of selec­tion fol­lowed. Key attrib­ut­es far beyond just com­pet­i­tive instincts were assessed in mak­ing the final choic­es. To be among this ini­tial num­ber, raw pilot skill is not enough. These indi­vid­u­als have been cho­sen because of their abil­i­ty to work in lock-step with the great­est tech­ni­cal minds to help devel­op both an entire­ly new form of game-chang­ing tech­nol­o­gy and the very fun­da­men­tals of a sport that promis­es to rapid­ly accel­er­ate its devel­op­ment.

These women and men are there­fore not only elite lev­el com­peti­tors but also proved an extra­or­di­nary lev­el of sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the tech­ni­cal require­ments to test and refine a form of aer­i­al motor-rac­ing built from a blank sheet of paper.  In that sense, they are the ulti­mate devel­op­ment rac­ing dri­vers and will work as a vital arm of the Alau­da Aero­nau­tics engi­neer­ing team to lead an approach to refine the dynam­ic and tac­ti­cal nuances that will make the EXA and Air­s­pedeer races the most com­pelling and pro­gres­sive sport­ing enti­ties in the world.

Emi­ly is Aus­trali­a’s most suc­cess­ful cur­rent rac­ing dri­ver. She has been recog­nised as a ris­ing star woman in sport. A career that start­ed in the NSW Excel Rac­ing Series soon pro­gressed to becom­ing the first female dri­ver to race in the Aus­tralian V8 Tour­ing Car Series.

She has raced at Bathurst where she secured the fastest lap in the 2016 Chal­lenge Bathurst and has since com­plet­ed in both the Aus­tralian Toy­ota 86 Rac­ing Series and Kumho Super3 Series. Emi­ly is a hands-on devel­op­er of rac­ing cars and reg­u­lar­ly works on the mechan­i­cal ele­ments of the machines she dri­ves. Emi­ly has enjoyed much suc­cess on the track, scor­ing 12 wins, 33 podi­ums and two poles in her career.

She said: “At heart I am a rac­er. I am join­ing Alau­da and Air­speed­er to push the bound­aries of motor­sport and make his­to­ry as the world’s first win­ning elec­tric fly­ing car rac­er. I’m hon­oured to be part of mak­ing his­to­ry by devel­op­ing this entire­ly new gen­er­a­tion of motor­sport.”

Zephatali devel­oped his sport­ing instincts as a surfer before start­ing a career that has seen him ascend to being one of the most admired mul­ti-blade pilots in the world. He sees a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion between the sports. He is no stranger to com­pet­i­tive rac­ing in a cut­ting edge sport.

In 2020, Zephatali was draft­ed into the Drone Cham­pi­ons League where he com­petes with Raiden Rac­ing. Like many prospec­tive Air­speed­er pilots, his back­ground sits along with the require­ments to under­stand the wider con­text of the rac­ing he will take part in. His path as a stu­dent of Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence has devel­oped a fas­ci­na­tion with the role that rac­ing plays in cre­at­ing and accel­er­at­ing a new clean-air mobil­i­ty rev­o­lu­tion. 

Zephatali said: “Rac­ing has always pushed the lim­its of what is pos­si­ble for both humans and their cre­ations. I’m excit­ed to demon­strate, through the com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment cre­at­ed by Air­speed­er rac­ing, tech­nol­o­gy that will help shape a fly­ing-car future per­son­al trans­port for my son’s gen­er­a­tion.” 

Fabio is a world-renowned FPV drone pilot. His work has tak­en him around the world cap­tur­ing footage from brands includ­ing Red Bull, Toy­ota and Go Pro.

Fabio’s path to rac­ing is less than con­ven­tion­al. He gave up a cor­po­rate career and an edu­ca­tion in finance to pur­sue his dream to unleash the poten­tial of FPV drones to cap­ture incred­i­ble con­tent. Orig­i­nal­ly born and raised in Ger­many, he relo­cat­ed to Syd­ney, Aus­tralia in 2015 to pur­sue a dream to fly drones pro­fes­sion­al­ly.

He soon built a large social fol­low­ing through the cre­ation of some of the most cap­ti­vat­ing film con­tent in the busi­ness. This drew the atten­tion of Alau­da who invit­ed him to become part of EXA, the world’s first series for remote­ly-pilot­ed elec­tric fly­ing rac­ing cars.

Fabio added: “I’m an instinc­tive rac­er with and am dri­ven by my mot­to to ‘stop think­ing and start fly­ing’. Join­ing Air­speed­er and Alau­da gives me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make his­to­ry in these incred­i­ble first fly­ing car Grand Prix. I’m so hap­py to be part of a tru­ly pro­gres­sive step towards a long-promised fly­ing car future.” 

Since Pear­son out­lined a vision to cre­ate the most excit­ing next-gen­er­a­tion motor­sport on the plan­et, a team of engi­neers, tech­ni­cal and sports rights minds drawn from the most cel­e­brat­ed names in motor­sport, per­for­mance auto­mo­tive and avi­a­tion have devel­oped the world’s first and only ful­ly func­tion­ing elec­tric fly­ing rac­ing cars. 

These next-gen­er­a­tion rac­ing machines pub­licly flew for the first time in the sum­mer of 2021 through devel­op­ment flights that have tak­en place in secret loca­tions across the deserts of South Aus­tralia. They will soon take part in a series of ground-break­ing races named the EXA Series, the per­ma­nent devel­op­ment for­mu­la for the forth­com­ing Air­speed­er crewed elec­tric fly­ing car races.

As such, the com­peti­tors that have been cho­sen to take part will embark upon an extra­or­di­nary devel­op­ment jour­ney, ascend­ing from elite remote pilots into true his­to­ry mak­ers as the world’s first com­peti­tors in the forth­com­ing Air­speed­er crewed races.