AutoFlight releases second video footage of its Prosperity I eVTOL air taxi

Aut­oFlight has released a sec­ond proof-of-con­cept (POC) video for its Pros­per­i­ty I air taxi, which debuts less than four months after the orig­i­nal POC video and includes a mod­i­fied, more effi­cient design.

In the lat­est design, new opti­mised lift­ing pro­pellers allow for high­er hov­er effi­cien­cy, while two pro­pellers that were pre­vi­ous­ly on either side of the air taxi have been replaced with one twin-motor cen­tre pro­peller to enhance cruis­ing, close to the final design which will be released lat­er this year.

Pros­per­i­ty I was designed for trans­fers between parts of a city, air­port com­mutes, con­nect­ing two near­by cities or enabling trips to the coun­try­side while avoid­ing traf­fic on the ground.

When ready for com­mer­cial flight in 2026, it is expect­ed that a trip that takes hours by car will be reduced to about 10 min­utes with Pros­per­i­ty I, with­out being any less safe or more expen­sive than a car taxi ride.

Aut­oFlight start­ed build­ing POC#2 from Jan 2022. The pro­duc­tion took around 3 months, with the maid­en flight in April, before achiev­ing 30+ addi­tion­al tran­si­tion flights in the last few weeks.

Aut­oFlight Europe man­ag­ing direc­tor Mark Hen­ning said: “POC#2 is a new mile­stone for us, and we are pleased to have achieved over 30 suc­cess­ful tran­si­tions in the last few weeks with a full-size air­craft.

“This fur­ther demon­strates the great poten­tial of our lift & cruise con­fig­u­ra­tion which com­bines sim­plic­i­ty and safe­ty into the final full-scale design of Pros­per­i­ty I, which we will reveal lat­er this year.”

Aut­oFlight CEO Tian Yu has over two decades of expe­ri­ence design­ing and build­ing elec­tric air­craft, and 300 elec­tric avi­a­tion-relat­ed patents.

He said: “We’re delight­ed to announce POC#2 for Pros­per­i­ty I, which takes us anoth­er step towards our vision of unlock­ing the skies for mass indi­vid­ual trans­port in the air by cre­at­ing safe, effi­cient eVTOL air­crafts.”

The mile­stone is the lat­est of a series of sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments for Aut­oFlight includ­ing the estab­lish­ment of a Euro­pean base in Augs­burg and the appoint­ment of Mark Hen­ning (for­mer­ly of Air­bus) as its Euro­pean Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, as well as $100 mil­lion invest­ment from next-gen­er­a­tion mobil­i­ty investor Team Glob­al.