ANALYSIS: Wisk’s Gen 6 eVTOL aircraft leaves no stone unturned when providing a complete passenger experience

eVTOL Insights’ Exec­u­tive Edi­tor Jason Pritchard was one of just a hand­ful of jour­nal­ists who attend­ed a reveal event for Wisk’s Gen 6 eVTOL air­craft in Cal­i­for­nia last month.

He heard from some of Wisk’s Lead­er­ship team on the work lead­ing up to Gen 6 and how it helped shape the air­craft into the mod­el the com­pa­ny intends to cer­ti­fy and bring to mar­ket. With the press embar­go now lift­ed, below are his thoughts on what was a busy, but pro­duc­tive cou­ple of days.

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As soon as the moment arrived and the cur­tain swept down to reveal Gen 6, I thought the air­craft looked great. Con­sid­er­ing I have only ever writ­ten about Gen 5, affec­tion­ate­ly known as Cora, the increase in size was seri­ous­ly impres­sive. Those in atten­dance were able to get up close and even sit inside the air­craft, which has more than enough space to pro­vide a pleas­ant trav­el­ling expe­ri­ence for the four pas­sen­gers on board. 

A quick test proved the bag­gage com­part­ment eas­i­ly fit­ted my large back­pack, and my smart­phone fit­ted com­fort­ably on the main shelf in front of me. Cup hold­ers were also placed on this shelf, with their final loca­tion with­in the air­craft appar­ent­ly being a source of con­stant debate dur­ing con­struc­tion!

What real­ly impressed me though was that Wisk has done its home­work when it comes to build­ing an air­craft that is acces­si­ble to all. It has tak­en an approach in that it will ‘show, not tell’; it won’t share any news unless it is ground­break­ing to the com­pa­ny and what it believes to be absolute­ly true. And what Wisk has shown to me with Gen 6 is that it hasn’t left any stone unturned.

It’s always great to be invit­ed to any reveal event such as this, but I was super excit­ed when I was giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be one of the first jour­nal­ists in the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty space to see Wisk’s Gen 6 air­craft — the one it plans to cer­ti­fy and put into com­mer­cial use for the gen­er­al pub­lic across the world.

A 30-minute coach ride from San Jose, Cal­i­for­nia — which allowed me to get intro­duced to the Wisk team and catch up with indus­try con­tacts in per­son for the first time — took us to Wisk’s test­ing facil­i­ty near Hol­lis­ter. Upon arrival, we were wel­comed by not one, but all of Wisk’s tech demon­stra­tor air­craft since its incep­tion in 2010. Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer Jim Tighe talked us all through each one and their sig­nif­i­cance.

For back­ground, Gen 1 helped Wisk under­stand the tran­si­tion of ver­ti­cal lift and for­ward flight, with its first flight in 2011 and then on to its first tran­si­tion — tak­ing off like a heli­copter, accel­er­at­ing to wing­borne flight and then tran­si­tion back to hov­er mode before land­ing — in 2014. It com­plet­ed more than 200 test flights and was designed to fit into a sin­gle park­ing space, which is why parts of the air­craft, such as the canards, were designed to fold inwards. 

Gen 2 was the first air­craft to have a per­son on board, evolv­ing the design of Gen 1. While it only com­plet­ed five test flights, Gen 2 helped Wisk engi­neers to under­stand the lim­i­ta­tions in exist­ing bat­tery tech­nolo­gies. This meant the air­craft size need­ed to be increased to com­pen­sate for the weight of the bat­ter­ies. It was also built to focus on wing-borne char­ac­ter­is­tics, as well as sys­tems val­i­da­tion and flight test team mat­u­ra­tion for Gen 3.

Gen 3 was a Col­lier Tro­phy final­ist for the demon­stra­tion of the full enve­lope of a pilot­ed eVTOL air­craft. It was built to test and val­i­date a new con­fig­u­ra­tion based on lessons learned from pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions, and oper­a­tion between 2015–2017, com­plet­ing 70 test flights. This mod­el was essen­tial for test­ing the posi­tion­ing and num­ber of booms, with many com­po­nents of this gen­er­a­tion of air­craft mak­ing their way into future designs, such as the air­craft struc­ture and wing shape. 

Gens 4 and 5 have sim­i­lar body shapes, but were used to test dif­fer­ent ver­ti­cal propul­sion sys­tems, avion­ics and soft­ware. In 2018, Wisk con­duct­ed its first ful­ly autonomous off-run­way flight and these two designs helped the com­pa­ny to solid­i­fy its pro­pri­etary boom design/configuration and mature its auton­o­my plat­form. They were also used to test air­space inte­gra­tion and autonomous flight in con­trolled air­space. To date, they have car­ried out more than 1,300 test flights since 2017 and have reached speeds of up to 145mph.

As many of our read­ers already know, Wisk is tak­ing a dif­fer­ent approach to its com­peti­tors in that its Gen 6 air­craft will be ful­ly autonomous and won’t have a pilot at the con­trols. Instead, a mem­ber of Wisk’s con­trol team will mon­i­tor the air­craft through­out its jour­ney. An inter­ac­tive screen in front of each pas­sen­ger gives them real-time updates, and they can use the screen to also change the tem­per­a­ture. 

You could sense the excite­ment amongst the Wisk team and I real­ly felt the pas­sion from each of the lead­er­ship team who gave an overview of areas such as auton­o­my, cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, prod­uct design and engi­neer­ing.

But for me, what is even more impres­sive is that it’s clear Wisk has done its home­work when build­ing an air­craft that is acces­si­ble to all. Dur­ing the ini­tial stages when design­ing Gen 6, the com­pa­ny ran sur­veys with more than 600 indi­vid­u­als and worked with the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Peo­ple with Dis­abil­i­ties (AAPD). Of the 600 indi­vid­u­als, 150 of them went through a mock set­up so they could pro­vide feed­back to Wisk’s design. 

Uri Tzarnotzky, Direc­tor of Prod­uct Design at Wisk, said: “Our pas­sen­gers want to make the most of that time either by being pro­duc­tive or by being able to rest, relax and recharge. So in one of our qual­i­ta­tive stud­ies, we asked peo­ple to pack a bag as if they are going on a jour­ney. We asked them to tell us about their day and when unpack­ing their bag, they showed us tablets, cell phones and charg­ing cables. So what we want­ed to do was sup­port these rou­tines.”

Gen 6 includes in-flight Wi-Fi and pas­sen­gers also have the abil­i­ty to charge their devices wire­less­ly or via wire charg­ing. They can lis­ten to music with head­phones pro­vid­ed or on their own by sync­ing their device to the air­craft, to avoid miss­ing any on-board mes­sages. Cab­in heat­ing and air con­di­tion­ing is also includ­ed, with each pas­sen­ger hav­ing indi­vid­ual con­trol flow. 

The inter­ac­tive dis­play pro­vides a pre-flight safe­ty brief­ing, which is also deliv­ered in sign lan­guage and with closed cap­tions. Dur­ing the jour­ney, pas­sen­gers can get real-time updates on where the air­craft is, what it is doing and when they will arrive at their des­ti­na­tion. For acces­si­bil­i­ty, there’s also audio noti­fi­ca­tions, lan­guage selec­tion and a colour scheme that’s amenable to most forms of colour blind­ness. 

Tzarnotzky added: “We’re work­ing tire­less­ly to ensure the air­craft and the ecosys­tem of prod­ucts and ser­vices are as acces­si­ble, inclu­sive and use­ful as pos­si­ble. We feel real­ly priv­i­leged to work on bring­ing the joy of flight to so many peo­ple. We’re build­ing more than just an air­craft. We’re min­imis­ing the bar­ri­ers to entry for this form of trav­el, so that any­one can take to the skies with us.”

A fire­side chat with Gary Gysin, Wisk’s Pres­i­dent and CEO, and Bri­an Yutko, Boe­ing Vice Pres­i­dent and Chief Engi­neer of Sus­tain­abil­i­ty & Future Mobil­i­ty, real­ly out­lined the strength of both com­pa­nies in their work to achieve uncrewed UAM oper­a­tions.

Com­ment­ing on the part­ner­ship, Bri­an added: “It was real­ly clear that this was the right part­ner­ship for us. Now, why is Boe­ing inter­est­ed in such a space? The small­est aero­plane that we make right now is the 737 Max. And that’s a pret­ty big aero­plane; the kind you sit on and take 50 of your best friends to Flori­da. 

“These aero­planes are obvi­ous­ly a very dif­fer­ent size. But what they rep­re­sent, I would put in two dimen­sions that are real­ly, real­ly impor­tant to us. 

“The first of all is the busi­ness aspect and mar­ket poten­tial of bring­ing safe, every­day and  zero emis­sions flight clos­er to where peo­ple live. There’s a poten­tial rev­o­lu­tion in how peo­ple fly, and we want to be a part of that. 

“But the sec­ond part of this, which is equal­ly impor­tant, is the pio­neer­ing tech­nol­o­gy that enables that busi­ness. Specif­i­cal­ly, that autonomous flight with human over­sight as Jon [Love­g­ren, Head of Auton­o­my at Wisk] and the team just described. You know that’s how it will actu­al­ly work.”

While there are still chal­lenges when it comes to auton­o­my, we at eVTOL Insights are very much look­ing for­ward to fol­low­ing Wisk’s progress as it aims to become the first to cer­ti­fy and com­mer­cialise an autonomous eVTOL air­craft. Thank you for mak­ing me feel so wel­come — I hope to come back and vis­it soon!