Baykar completes first test flight of its Cezeri eVTOL prototype

Unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle devel­op­er Baykar has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the first test flight of its Cez­eri eVTOL pro­to­type in Istan­bul, Turkey.

The 230-kilo­gram pro­to­type flew 10 metres in the air and was car­ried out under the super­vi­sion of the company’s chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer, Selçuk Bayrak­tar.

In a state­ment, he said: “The upcom­ing peri­od will see more devel­oped pro­to­types of the fly­ing car and test will be con­duct­ed with humans in the vehi­cle.

“Though it may take anoth­er 10 to 15 years to launch the car, we could wit­ness recre­ation­al use in rur­al areas such as ATVs with­in 3–4 years.”

The Cez­eri fly­ing car is named after Ismail al-Jazari, a 12th Cen­tu­ry Mus­lim engi­neer and poly­math, and was first intro­duced at the Teknofest Avi­a­tion, Space and Tech­nol­o­gy Fes­ti­val in Sep­tem­ber 2019.

Baykar has said it has been designed to play an active role in pas­sen­ger and car­go trans­porta­tion, and with its intro­duc­tion, will be able to help decrease traf­fic den­si­ty in urban trans­porta­tion, while min­imis­ing the time spent on roads and decrease the air pol­lu­tion caused by vehi­cles.

The 100% elec­tric car is pow­ered by recharge­able lithi­um-ion bat­ter­ies and fea­tures eight elec­tric motors and pro­pellers. Hav­ing three redun­dant intel­li­gent flight sys­tems, Cez­eri will be equipped with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) in the future.

The car is expect­ed to reach a cruis­ing speed of 100 kph, with a flight ceil­ing of 2,000 meters and a range of 70–80 kilo­me­ters.

Baykar, estab­lished in 1984, is a lead­ing pro­duc­er of armed and non-armed drones, con­trol sys­tems, sim­u­la­tors and avion­ics sys­tems.