CycloTech presents first air car with cyclo rotors in Austria

CycloTech’s Cruise­Up air car will use cyclo rotor tech­nol­o­gy with 360° thrust vec­tor­ing with­in a com­pact design, based on 15 years devel­op­ment, wind tun­nel test­ing and expe­ri­ence from more than 500 flights of its tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor.

Cruise­Up uses six cyclo rotors for elec­tric propul­sion with encap­su­lat­ed mov­ing parts pro­vid­ing redun­dan­cy to allow it to fly and land safe­ly, even in the event of a rotor fail­ure.

The spe­cif­ic ori­en­ta­tion of the six rotors, with two on the length axis of the vehi­cle, enables pre­ci­sion side­ways and back­ward flight, as well as mid-air brak­ing with­out tilt­ing or bank­ing the vehi­cle.

Cruise­Up pro­vides manoeu­vra­bil­i­ty and a ‘seam­less’ tran­si­tion from hov­er to for­ward flight. By decou­pling the flight path from the vehi­cle atti­tude and com­pen­sat­ing for gusts in harsh weath­er con­di­tions, Cruise­Up cap­i­talis­es on CycloRo­tors ‘unique’ 360° thrust vec­tor­ing, offer­ing a top speed of 150km/h and a range of 100 km.

“Mea­sur­ing 6.7m x 3.3m, Cruise­Up is just 50% big­ger than cur­rent cars and way small­er than most air taxi con­cepts. The elec­tri­cal­ly pow­ered cyclo rotor 360° thrust vec­tor­ing propul­sion sys­tem enables a com­pact design, result­ing in a small vehi­cle foot­print with high manoeu­vra­bil­i­ty,” said CycloTech project man­ag­er Andrea March­stein­er.

CycloTech chief devel­op­ment offi­cer Markus Steinke added: “CycloRo­tors are the entry tick­et to the mass mar­ket of sus­tain­able avi­a­tion with a mar­ket of mil­lions of vehi­cles per year.”

CycloTech’s propul­sion sys­tem is based on the Voith-Schnei­der prin­ci­ple. The Aus­tri­an com­pa­ny devel­ops the 360° thrust vec­tor­ing CycloRo­tors, a com­pact design with instant con­trol of mag­ni­tude and ori­en­ta­tion of the omni-direc­tion­al thrust that enable easy tran­si­tion from ver­ti­cal hov­er to for­ward flight with gust con­trol and pre­ci­sion land­ing.

Last month, after com­pre­hen­sive indoor prepa­ra­tion, bench and flight test­ing, Cyclo Tech took the lat­est ver­sion of its tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor “Bumblebee2.0” to the skies. It fea­tures 4 CR42 CycloRo­tors and an enhanced flight con­trol sys­tem.

CycloTech starts out­door fly­ing