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VIDEO: Bellwether Industries reveals first flight test footage of its half-scale Volar prototype

Urban air mobil­i­ty start­up Bell­wether Indus­tries has released a video of a free-flight test of its half-scale eVTOL Volar mod­el.

The com­pa­ny came out of stealth mode last year and made its pub­lic debut at Lon­don’s DroneX/Helitech in Octo­ber and the Dubai Air Show in Novem­ber. Both events were an oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case its pro­to­type and intro­duce the con­cept of Volar, the deriv­a­tive that defines pri­vate urban air mobil­i­ty air­craft for intracity trav­el.

Bell­wether Indus­tries com­plet­ed the free-flight test of its Volar in Novem­ber 2021, achiev­ing a break­through in progress. It was con­duct­ed at an alti­tude of 13 feet with a speed of 40 kilo­me­tres per hour. The team men­tioned that the test flight demon­strat­ed sta­bil­i­ty and con­trol­la­bil­i­ty of the pro­to­type and would be the start of a series of devel­op­ment projects.

Kun-Yang (Daniel) Chen, CEO and founder at Bell­wether Indus­tries, said: “The year 2021 marked the point at which Bell­wether Indus­tries takes a great step for­ward and has shown our poten­tial towards the next lev­el. It’s an excit­ing moment to wit­ness the world’s first eVTOL with­out a large wingspan or exposed blades come into real­i­ty.”

Volar is defined as a new cat­e­go­ry of pri­vate urban air­craft for intra-city trav­el. It has a hid­den propul­sion sys­tem, zero emis­sions, a very com­pact pro­file, and the abil­i­ty to take off and land ver­ti­cal­ly.

The ulti­mate goal of Bell­wether Indus­tries is to build a brand new three-dimen­sion­al lifestyle and to lead the world toward a more com­pre­hen­sive urban mobil­i­ty.

Bell­wether’s full-scale volar will be a 4‑to-5-seater air­craft, car­ry­ing out intracity trav­els at an alti­tude of 3,000 feet (915 metres) with a speed of up to 220 kilo­me­tres per hour (135 miles per hour).

When it came to the phi­los­o­phy behind the prod­uct, the com­pa­ny has said the human-cen­tric design is the indis­pens­able ele­ment for Volar to live in har­mo­ny with the urban envi­ron­ment and become acces­si­ble to peo­ple.

The iter­a­tion of its mod­el has been in progress and the com­pa­ny is begin­ning to expand its part­ner­ships.

Kai-Tse (KT) Lin, Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer and co-founder at Bell­wether Indus­tries, added: “Our volar flies smooth­ly and proves our efforts that go into inno­va­tion and tech­nol­o­gy. We are con­fi­dent in our volar and will strive for per­fec­tion with con­tin­u­ous improve­ment.

“We will meet you all with a brand-new image and demon­strate our big­ger, more ambi­tious goal.”

Bell­wether Indus­tries is a human-cen­tric UAM com­pa­ny found­ed in Lon­don in 2019. Its mis­sion is to pro­vide the most com­pat­i­ble urban air mobil­i­ty solu­tion for intra-city trav­els with a safe, effi­cient, and com­fort­able expe­ri­ence.

Start­ing with the inven­tion of ‘volar’, Bell­wether’s core mis­sion is to bring urban air mobil­i­ty to peo­ple’s dai­ly lives and min­imise the dam­age to the envi­ron­ment includ­ing poten­tial phys­i­cal dam­age and noise, and to make the most effi­cient use of space and time.

The team believes that peo­ple com­mut­ing in the sky is inevitable with­in the next 10 years. There­fore, it wants to cre­ate a volar for any­one to fly any­time and any­where to any point.

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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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