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Ryse Aero’s One-Person “Super-Easy to Fly” Ultralight eVTOL, “No Pilot’s Licence Required”

Ohio-based Ryse Aero Tech­nolo­gies claims it has the ide­al one-per­son eVTOL that is super easy to fly, safer than any oth­er ultra­light craft, and with no pilot’s licence required, any­one can mann it, reports Auto­mo­tive News.

The com­pa­ny, found­ed in April 2021, has recent­ly been tak­ing orders for its one-seater Recon ultra­light eVTOL air­craft. The craft’s cre­den­tials are impres­sive. A top speed of 63mph; a max­i­mum alti­tude of 400 feet; max­i­mum flight time of 25 min­utes; along with claims of only 45 min­utes train­ing need­ed. Then there is the abil­i­ty to take-off and land on water. It sounds too good to be true.

The Recon is pow­ered by six inde­pen­dent motors, each with remov­able and recharge­able bat­ter­ies. The down­side being it can­not be flown over pop­u­lat­ed areas or car­ry heavy car­go.

Mick Kowitz, CEO of Ryse Aero, explained at the recent Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, “The idea was to make some­thing extreme­ly safe and reli­able that any­one could fly. We offer up to two hours’ worth of train­ing, if required, and then you’re oper­at­ing it. It is that easy.”

Ryse has built four pro­to­types, as well as a few pre-pro­duc­tion craft, which it’s cur­rent­ly tri­alling with farm­ers as the company’s mar­ket strat­e­gy is to tar­get the U.S agri­cul­tur­al indus­try. The start­up also sees many oth­er poten­tial use cas­es includ­ing search and res­cue, parks and recre­ation, as well as oil and gas min­ing.

Kowitz con­tin­ued, “We’re real­ly look­ing at the craft’s abil­i­ty to fly farm­ers over wet-sod­den fields dur­ing the plant­i­ng sea­son or reach, say, a field with blight. At present, what they do is dri­ve as far as they can in their pick­up truck and then walk some­times for two or three miles to where the prob­lem is. The Recon can get them there quick­ly with­out com­paction or dam­age to the soil.”

Mick Kowitz

So, what’s the price? Around USD150,000 when it reach­es the mar­ket. In the farm­ing world that’s quite rea­son­able when a top-end trac­tor can cost USD500,000 or more. And Ryse has car­ried out tests which show the Recon has a lifes­pan of between eight and ten years.

The pub­lic seem attract­ed to the con­cept as Kowitz says over 100 cus­tomers have already put their names down to buy a craft lead­ing to USD15 mil­lion poten­tial sales where Ryse, buoyed by this inter­est, is now build­ing a pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty, and aims to pro­duce 10 vehi­cles per month this year, with deliv­er­ies begin­ning at the end of 2023, ear­ly 2024.

The com­pa­ny has raised USD5.5 mil­lion invest­ment and hopes to attract anoth­er USD25 mil­lion via a Series B round to help it ramp up pro­duc­tion to 100 units per month lead­ing into 2025.

The one pos­si­ble snag Ryse Aero faces is whether its Recon eVTOL can actu­al­ly be used for com­mer­cial pur­pos­es. The FAA’s rul­ing on ultra­light air­craft, Part 103, states the vehi­cle “must be used for recre­ation or sport pur­pos­es only.”

Yet, the com­pa­ny points out there are plen­ty of oper­a­tors using this type of fly­ing vehi­cle to improve their busi­ness oper­a­tions with­out vio­lat­ing the rule. Ryse also says it has had con­ver­sa­tions with the FAA regard­ing the use case “with no con­cerns.”

For more infor­ma­tion

(News Source: Auto­mo­tive News Video)

(Images: Ryse Aero)

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