City Airbus NextGen eVTOL Update: “A Year of Exciting Developments”

Balk­iz Sar­i­han, Head of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty at Air­bus, took to the company’s web­site this week, by post­ing a blog enti­tled, ‘CityAir­bus NextGen leaves no mile­stone unturned.’

She begins, “Some­one asked me what we’re focus­ing on this year, and I said, ‘we’re going to build, build, build.’ And this is what we’ve done.” Air­bus Heli­copters’ Donauwörth facil­i­ties has been — late­ly — “busy, busy, busy” con­struct­ing the pro­to­type of the CityAir­bus NextGen eVTOL Air­craft. Sar­i­han enthus­es, “Any­time we arrive on site, you want to run and see what else is new.” 

She explains, “Watch­ing it take shape, with sub­com­po­nents arriv­ing dai­ly, is what the team has been work­ing on for two years since the prototype’s launch. How­ev­er, this – and the pow­er-on mile­stone – are only the most vis­i­ble signs of a pro­gram advanc­ing on all fronts.” 

Sar­i­han points out the NextGen has tak­en the best of Air­bus heli­copter, com­mer­cial and unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle know-how to pro­duce “an opti­mised all-elec­tric, winged, ver­ti­cal lift archi­tec­ture.” Yet, because the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty indus­try is so new, the com­pa­ny has focused more “on the vehicle’s ‘ecosys­tem’: every­thing that will enable its intro­duc­tion into ser­vice.”

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Invest­ing in a ded­i­cat­ed test hangar to mature the aircraft’s dis­rup­tive technology—especially sub­com­po­nents — and con­duct the first phas­es of the flight test cam­paign, has been crit­i­cal to its devel­op­ment. This includes the bat­tery pack pro­duced by Air­bus Defence and Space, pro­pellers made in Paris Le Bour­get, and the inno­v­a­tive flight con­trol sys­tem, in devel­op­ment with the Ver­tex project, which suc­cess­ful­ly tri­alled in Octo­ber on the Flight­Lab. 

Sar­i­han con­tin­ues, “The sim­plic­i­ty we want to include as part of this eVTOL design is key,” point­ing out the NextGen will ini­tial­ly roll out as a pilot­ed vehi­cle. 

The actu­al eVTOL air­craft con­sists of four seats and is expect­ed to be able to fly 50 miles at a cruise speed of 120 km/h. The air­craft is also believed to have noise lev­els below 70 dBA dur­ing take­off and land­ing, and around 65 dBA while in fly­over mode.

Should the pro­to­type be com­plet­ed this year, Air­bus is then expect­ed to adhere to its time­line of con­duct­ing flight test­ing in 2024.

To read the Full Blog Please Click on this Link

https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/stories/2023–11-cityairbus-nextgen-leaves-no-milestone-unturned

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.airbus.com/en/innovation/low-carbon-aviation/urban-air-mobility/cityairbus-nextgen/cityairbus-demonstra­tor

(Images: Air­bus)