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MGI Engineering Launches Cargo eVTOL Development Program

A for­mer F1 Tech­ni­cal Direc­tor has launched a new busi­ness under the MGI Engi­neer­ing name to embark on a devel­op­ment pro­gram for a car­go eVTOL, reports a press release. Mike Gas­coyne, Founder and CEO of MGI Engi­neer­ing, offi­cial­ly unveiled a ful­ly func­tion­al car­go UAV tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor at the evtolinsights.com Lon­don Con­fer­ence this week. The com­pa­ny was also a spon­sor of the event.

“The announce­ment thrusts the well-estab­lished spe­cial­ist engi­neer­ing con­sul­tan­cy firm into the new­ly-emerg­ing car­go eVTOL indus­try,” explains the release, “which promis­es to bring a fresh view­point on how to devel­op the lat­est aero­space tech­nol­o­gy for these nov­el vehi­cles.”

It con­tin­ues, “MGI is apply­ing For­mu­la 1 devel­op­ment philoso­phies and mind­set to the car­go eVTOL UAV mar­ket. Light­weight com­pos­ite struc­tures with a high­ly-effi­cient, fast-paced iter­a­tive design process­es are key ele­ments of the company’s approach to tack­ling the chal­lenges that the car­go eVTOL indus­try presents and it aims to pro­vide these con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices through­out this sec­tor.”

And goes on, “MGI Engineering’s prowess stems from its decades of expe­ri­ence at the pin­na­cle of motor­sport, F1, a tenure that is reflect­ed through its senior staff. Gas­coyne has pre­vi­ous­ly worked at McLaren, Tyrrell, Sauber, Renault, Toy­ota before set­ting up the Lotus F1 Team via MGI in 2009.”

MGI Car­go Drone Dis­played at the evtolinsights.com Lon­don Con­fer­ence (cred­it: evtolinsights.com)

Gas­coyne gave an excel­lent talk at the Con­fer­ence on Wednes­day (April 19th), where he dis­cussed the sim­i­lar­i­ties between the tech­nolo­gies used for FI and drones.

A year of research has led the com­pa­ny to cre­at­ing its Mos­qui­to autonomous tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tors for car­go appli­ca­tions. Devel­op­ing ultra-light­weight struc­tur­al com­pos­ite designs are a key fac­tor to ensure aer­i­al vehi­cles can achieve their mis­sions effec­tive­ly and effi­cient­ly, where MGI’s solu­tion focus­es on a con­fig­urable design with two vari­ants of its demon­stra­tor tech­nol­o­gy.

The release explains, “The first is a tilt rotor con­fig­u­ra­tion, with two rotors on each cor­ner capa­ble of tilt­ing from 45 degrees in the for­ward direc­tion to, 45 degrees rear­ward. The sec­ond fea­tures eight rotors with direct dri­ve motors dis­trib­uted across four wings and all four wings use MGI’s pro­pri­etary tilt mech­a­nism that is used to con­trol pitch and roll. This vari­ant is able to take-off ver­ti­cal­ly and ful­ly tran­si­tion to winged flight for long dis­tance mis­sions.”

It con­tin­ues, “The mod­u­lar approach to this vehi­cle, where wings and rotors can be con­fig­ured accord­ing to the mis­sion pro­file, allows for scal­able com­mon plat­forms using com­mon bat­tery mod­ules to ensure cost per­form­ing kilo­me­tre-per-mile solu­tions for car­go deliv­ery. The vehi­cle plat­form con­cept has also been designed to be scaled-up effi­cient­ly to pay­load-capa­ble vehi­cles car­ry­ing up to 500kg. The plat­form shar­ing solu­tions are inspired by Mike’s expe­ri­ence of work­ing with the auto­mo­tive indus­try through­out his career.”

Gas­coyne com­ment­ed, “We are real­ly proud to announce our car­go eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor pro­gramme at this year’s eVTOL Insights’ Con­fer­ence. We believe that devel­op­ing sus­tain­able elec­tric avi­a­tion vehi­cles com­bined with our unique exper­tise and expe­ri­ence from For­mu­la 1 of light­weight hybrid com­pos­ite vehi­cles is the future of the trans­port indus­try and will ease the strain on cur­rent meth­ods whilst decar­bon­is­ing mul­ti­ple sec­tors.”

(Cred­it: MGI Engi­neer­ing)

He con­tin­ued, “We are very hap­py to have a ful­ly work­ing demon­stra­tor vehi­cle that has passed all our tests to date includ­ing ful­ly tran­si­tion­ing from ver­ti­cal to hor­i­zon­tal flight. We’re excit­ed to see where our devel­op­ment jour­ney takes us and look for­ward to solv­ing the unique and nov­el chal­lenges the indus­try presents us with.” Adding, “We also want to invite clients, part­ners and investors to join our vision to devel­op high­ly effi­cient car­go UAV solu­tions.”

Back­ground

MGI Engi­neer­ing was found­ed in 2003. Founder and CEO, Mike Gas­coyne, has worked in Senior Man­age­ment and as a Tech­ni­cal Direc­tor lev­el in For­mu­la 1 for over 25 years. The com­pa­ny lever­ages its exten­sive expe­ri­ence of util­is­ing cut­ting-edge tech­nolo­gies to offer com­plete engi­neer­ing and project man­age­ment solu­tions – in incum­bent and new­ly emerg­ing indus­tries such as car­go eVTOL to max­imise sus­tain­abil­i­ty and future-proof via­bil­i­ty with a mis­sion-led engi­neer­ing approach.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://mgiengineering.com

(Top image: MGI Engi­neer­ing)

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