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Nalwa Aero unveils its piloted five-seater eVTOL scale model in India, offering multiple use cases for military and commercial sectors

Words by Eiman Sue­na­ka

India start­up Nal­wa Aero unveiled a 1:4 scale mod­el of its pilot­ed NALWA 5X eVTOL air­craft to the pub­lic at the Bom­bay Exhi­bi­tion Cen­tre last month, which the com­pa­ny says is the coun­try’s first five-seater con­cept.

Kul­jeet S. Sand­hu, CEO and founder of Nal­wa Aero, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Nel­son Salas, the CEO of the Grug Group, have togeth­er devel­oped NALWA 5X to pro­vide one of the first eVTOL air­craft ser­vices in India.

Once oper­a­tional, the patent­ed NALWA 5X will offer a range of poten­tial trans­port options for both mil­i­tary and com­mer­cial sec­tors, show­cas­ing its ver­sa­til­i­ty and adapt­abil­i­ty for var­i­ous appli­ca­tions.

The air­craft will have a max­i­mum speed of 400km/h, reach­ing an alti­tude of 2,000 meters. It also has autonomous capa­bil­i­ties for up to 90 min­utes, plus an addi­tion­al 15 min­utes of reserves.

In terms of design, the NALWA 5X has a piv­ot­ing propul­sion sys­tem which enhances its manoeu­vra­bil­i­ty, sta­bil­i­ty and con­trol. It is com­prised of 12 elec­tric duct­ed fans, with the air­craft able to achieve var­i­ous VTOL capa­bil­i­ties by inde­pen­dent­ly con­trol­ling the speed and direc­tion of each duct­ed fan, as well as pro­vid­ing excep­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty and con­trol in chal­leng­ing wind con­di­tions.

While the NALWA 5X will be for five peo­ple includ­ing the pilot, the inte­ri­or con­fig­u­ra­tions are mod­u­lar and can be recon­fig­ured to accom­mo­date diverse mis­sions, from pas­sen­ger trans­port to car­go deliv­ery.

The air­craft can be utilised in many ways, such as a med­ical evac­u­a­tion air­craft, where the cab­in can include stretch­ers, patient mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems and life sup­port equip­ment.

The var­i­ous design ben­e­fits of the NALWA 5X air­craft, pro­vides the oppor­tu­ni­ty for mil­i­tary use-case appli­ca­tions, such as, troop deploy­ment from navy ships, recon­nais­sance mis­sions, search and res­cue sup­port, close air sup­port, sup­ply deliv­ery and many more.

The autonomous nav­i­ga­tion on board will include a vari­ety of sen­sors, includ­ing cam­eras, radar and GPS, to track the aircraft’s posi­tion and envi­ron­ment. It will be capa­ble of plan­ning and exe­cut­ing flight paths, avoid­ing obsta­cles and respond­ing to emer­gen­cies. This in turn will ensure safe­ty, effi­cien­cy and flex­i­bil­i­ty.

The gov­ern­ment of India wants to build 600 heli­pads along the high­ways for emer­gency trans­porta­tion air­craft. The coun­try’s pop­u­la­tion is cur­rent­ly at 1.4 bil­lion, and there are very lim­it­ed air­craft avail­able for emer­gen­cies in the amount of 254 civ­il heli­copters that are avail­able for use.

Nal­wa Aero’s mis­sion is to rev­o­lu­tionise air trans­porta­tion by har­ness­ing the poten­tial of eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy, pro­vid­ing effi­cient and sus­tain­able solu­tions for urban air mobil­i­ty, and dri­ving soci­etal and eco­nom­ic growth.

The com­pa­ny is now seek­ing investors to fund its progress for mov­ing for­ward to build the NALWA eVTOL pro­to­type. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it nalwa.aero.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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