Early eVTOL innovators showcase their plans on day three of ‘Agility Prime’

Senior fig­ures from some of the com­pa­nies lead­ing the charge in the eVTOL indus­try spoke to thou­sands of view­ers on day three of the US Air Force’s ‘Agili­ty Prime’ pro­gramme yes­ter­day (Wednes­day).

Fol­low­ing a speech by US Sen­a­tor for Ver­mont, Patrick Leahy, and Mike Brown, Direc­tor of the Defense Inno­va­tion Unit (DIU), lead­ers from Beta Tech­nolo­gies, Elroy Air, Joby Avi­a­tion, LIFT Air­craft, Piasec­ki Air­craft and Sabrew­ing Air­craft all gave five-minute pre­sen­ta­tions about their prod­ucts and the tech­nol­o­gy behind them dur­ing the morn­ing ses­sion.

Each speak­er then broke out into ‘break­out’ groups, where those watch­ing could join and ask their own ques­tions. The Guin­ness Book of Records also joined in as the event aimed to break a world record for the most num­ber of peo­ple in break­outs.

Those speak­ing were Paul Scia­r­ra, Exec­u­tive Chair­man of Joby Avi­a­tion, Kyle Clark, CEO of Beta Tech­nolo­gies, Ed De Reyes, Chair­man and CEO of Sabrew­ing Air­craft, Dave Mer­rill, CEO of Elroy Air, John Piasec­ki, CEO of Piasec­ki Air­craft, and Matt Chasen, CEO of LIFT Air­craft.

And it seems Joby Avi­a­tion is cer­tain­ly motor­ing ahead with plans to devel­op and cer­ti­fy its next-gen­er­a­tion civil­ian air­craft, which is both all elec­tric and capa­ble of ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing’.

In their pre­sen­ta­tion, Scia­r­ra explained how the Cal­i­for­nia-based com­pa­ny has been active­ly fly­ing its Gen­er­a­tion 2 ver­sion, which is full-size and capa­ble of car­ry­ing pas­sen­gers. It is also con­struct­ing a man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty in Mari­na, with the poten­tial to one day pro­duce more than 250 vehi­cles every year.

He added: “Our goal is to devel­op a new trans­porta­tion solu­tion that can get peo­ple to their des­ti­na­tion 5–10 times faster. We can do that at greater safe­ty and over time, at a sim­i­lar cost to dri­ving on the ground.”

To watch each pre­sen­ta­tion, vis­it http://www.agilityprime.com