Eve Air Mobility Advances its eVTOL testing phase

Eve Air Mobil­i­ty is advanc­ing its eVTOL test­ing phase, part of Eve’s build­ing blocks approach to fur­ther enhance the matu­ri­ty of its tech­nol­o­gy to deliv­er ‘the best prod­uct to the mar­ket’.

“We are pleased with our pro­gram devel­op­ment to date and mak­ing very good progress as we move toward the selec­tion of pri­ma­ry sup­pli­ers and finalise the def­i­n­i­tion of our air­craft sys­tems archi­tec­ture,” said Alice Altissi­mo, vice pres­i­dent of pro­gram man­age­ment and oper­a­tion of Eve.

“We con­tin­ue to invest and our team is work­ing hard with the goal of devel­op­ing a mature air­craft for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and entry into ser­vice in 2026.”

Eve has com­plet­ed tests on its pro­peller rig in Brazil to mea­sure aero­dy­nam­ic per­for­mance and sound prop­er­ties for mod­el­ling and devel­op­ment. The num­ber and the over­all char­ac­ter­is­tics of blades, like tor­sion and shape, are crit­i­cal in defin­ing vibra­tion, load and sound pro­file, as well as ener­gy require­ments of the eVTOL. Engi­neers test­ed mul­ti­ple mod­els to improve effi­cien­cy and reduce sound foot­print and oper­at­ing costs.

The com­pa­ny also recent­ly began test­ing its ver­ti­cal lift rotors aboard a new cus­tom truck-mount­ed plat­form. The mobile test­bed was designed specif­i­cal­ly to eval­u­ate the per­for­mance of rotors dur­ing the tran­si­tion phase of flight.

Eve has already begun test­ing and gath­er­ing data on the aero­dy­nam­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics of rotors in for­ward flight. Its eVTOL fea­tures a lift+cruise con­fig­u­ra­tion with ded­i­cat­ed rotors for ver­ti­cal flight and fixed wings to fly on cruise, with no com­po­nents required to change posi­tion dur­ing flight. This con­fig­u­ra­tion favours safe­ty, effi­cien­cy, reli­a­bil­i­ty, and cer­ti­fi­a­bil­i­ty while also reduc­ing the cost of oper­a­tion and addi­tion­al main­te­nance, repair and over­haul costs.

The results from the company’s recent­ly com­plet­ed wind-tun­nel tests, along with the find­ings from the pro­peller and truck-mount­ed rig, are used to increase the accu­ra­cy of its flight sim­u­la­tor and fly-by-wire sys­tem.

Eve is also util­is­ing data from ongo­ing enhanced com­pu­ta­tion­al flu­id dynam­ics cal­cu­la­tions to analyse the tran­si­tion between the hov­er and cruise phas­es of the flight, among oth­er tools.

Eve expects to select main equip­ment sup­pli­ers in the first half of 2023 and start the assem­bly of its first full-scale eVTOL pro­to­type dur­ing the sec­ond half, fol­lowed by test­ing in 2024. Its eVTOL is sched­uled to be cer­ti­fied and enter ser­vice in 2026.

Ear­li­er this month, Eve Air Mobil­i­ty com­plet­ed wind tun­nel test­ing near Lucerne, Switzer­land, with a scale mod­el of its eVTOL vehi­cle.