Honda Accelerates e/VTOL Development “After Prototype Receives FAA Approval for Flight Testing”

As Japan­ese car man­u­fac­tur­ers go, Hon­da is well behind the dom­i­nance of Toy­ota and South Kore­a’s Hyundai, so any men­tion of eVTOL devel­op­ment can be met with a wry smile.

Toy­ota leads the glob­al automak­er mar­ket sell­ing over 10 mil­lion cars in 2023; Hyundai lies in third with over sev­en mil­lion; where­as Hon­da is in 7th posi­tion mus­ter­ing less than five mil­lion sales. The log­ic being, Toy­ota and Hyundai have a lot more mon­ey to invest than Hon­da. This becomes obvi­ous when Toy­ota is clos­ing in on a USD1 bil­lion invest­ment in Joby Avi­a­tion. 

Mean­while, Hyundai is devel­op­ing its own Super­nal eVTOL, but Hon­da is match­ing this. In that respect, like Hyundai, it is show­ing more courage than Toy­ota, although some might say, tak­ing a riski­er approach. While, Stel­lan­tis who lies 4th in the car man­u­fac­tur­er chart, has cho­sen a sim­i­lar path to Toy­ota, invest­ing in Archer. 

News of Honda’s tilt rotor eVTOL devel­op­ment has remained under the radar, so when news broke last week on Linkedin that its pro­to­type has recent­ly received FAA approval for flight test­ing, it tit­il­lat­ed once more the prospect of a fur­ther fly­ing taxi mak­ing the com­mer­cial fin­ish­ing line.

Hon­da con­firms the devel­op­ment of its own eVTOL air­craft, which will fea­ture a gas tur­bine hybrid pow­er unit

Hon­da Lat­est Automak­er to Pur­sue e/VTOL Dream

The post stat­ed, “Hon­da is mov­ing for­ward in the devel­op­ment of its eVTOL air­craft, recent­ly receiv­ing FAA approval for flight test­ing. This pro­to­type, cre­at­ed by the Hon­da Research Insti­tute, is part of Honda’s explo­ration into hybrid-elec­tric air trav­el, aim­ing for a range of up to 216 nau­ti­cal miles.”

It con­tin­ues, “The FAA’s exemp­tion allows Hon­da to con­duct demon­stra­tion flights through Octo­ber 2026 with a scaled-down test mod­el weigh­ing over 55 pounds. Although few details have been released, Hon­da describes the design as a mul­ti-rotor con­fig­u­ra­tion with both lift­ing and propul­sion pro­pellers, empha­sis­ing qui­eter oper­a­tion than tra­di­tion­al heli­copters.” Adding, “The project ben­e­fits from Honda’s expe­ri­ence in cer­ti­fy­ing air­craft, with ambi­tions to bring advanced elec­tric air­craft to the skies in the near future.”

Thomas Kyle Leonard, a qual­i­ty man­age­ment spe­cial­ist, replied on Linkedin, “Every­thing Hon­da touch­es turns to gold. I am sure this design has already been deemed func­tion­al by their engi­neer­ing team. Now it’s time for a 2/3rds-scale demon­stra­tor mod­el to hit the skies.”

Honda’s Type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion path when com­pared to Super­nal, is in direct com­pe­ti­tion. Where­as, Toy­ota via Joby will have pole posi­tion and be ahead by two or more years over its Asian rivals.

To refresh: Honda’s web­site explains that “One of the key fea­tures of Honda’s eVTOL not found in any oth­er is the gas tur­bine hybrid pow­er unit, which great­ly extends the range. All-elec­tric eVTOLs, which fly sole­ly on ener­gy stored in the bat­tery, have a range of around 62 miles and are intend­ed for intra-city trans­porta­tion, an alter­na­tive for taxi use. On the oth­er hand, Hon­da eVTOL equipped with a hybrid pow­er unit has a range of  around 250 miles, which cov­ers even inter-city (city-to-city) trans­porta­tion.”

This places Hon­da in the pri­ma­ry seat over its Japan­ese and South Kore­an com­peti­tors as both Joby and Super­nal are pow­ered by all-elec­tric propul­sion sys­tems. Although, some may point to Joby’s land­mark flight in June, when its hydrogen/electric pro­to­type com­plet­ed a 523-mile flight above the company’s man­u­fac­tur­ing and flight test facil­i­ties in Mari­na, Cal­i­for­nia.

Honda’s web­site con­tin­ues, “F1 tech­nolo­gies, both tan­gi­ble and intan­gi­ble, have also been incor­po­rat­ed into the devel­op­ment our eVTOL, includ­ing F1 pow­er unit tech­nol­o­gy applied for the ultra-high rpm gen­er­a­tor, as well as the sim­u­la­tion analy­sis tech­nol­o­gy and facil­i­ties for aero­dy­nam­ic devel­op­ment. Rac­ing chas­sis tech­nolo­gies are also applied to Hon­da eVTOL as there are many sim­i­lar­i­ties in aero­dy­nam­ic phe­nom­e­na because the speed range and air­flow tur­bu­lence eVTOL needs to man­age are clos­er to those of F1 machines than of pas­sen­ger air­planes.”

Adding, “More­over, Hon­da also has time-proven hybrid tech­nolo­gies as well as safe­ty tech­nolo­gies such as Hon­da SENSING tech­nolo­gies. Par­tic­i­pa­tion of Hon­da engi­neers with expe­ri­ence in var­i­ous areas includ­ing Hon­da­Jet, F1, hybrid vehi­cles and safe­ty and dri­ver-assis­tive tech­nolo­gies, is enabling the project team to pur­sue the devel­op­ment of eVTOL unique only to Hon­da.”

While, Europe is find­ing it dif­fi­cult to finance its own eVTOL devel­op­ments, at least two oth­er coun­tries apart from Amer­i­ca and Chi­na are show­ing an apti­tude and desire to com­pete in this future mar­ket. Hon­da may be viewed as the shrimp of its Asian com­peti­tors, but a shrimp could trans­form into a Tiger prawn

Please Watch Video: “The Com­pe­ti­tion — Beware!”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://global.honda/en/tech/Electric_Vertical_Take-Off_and_Landing_aircraft_eVTOL

(Images: Hon­da)

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