Embraer reveals eVTOL vehicle concept for future urban mobility

With the race to make fly­ing air taxis a real­i­ty, air­craft mak­er Embraer has out­lined its own elec­tric eVTOL fly­ing con­cept — with the aim of mak­ing it acces­si­ble to ‘every­one’.

Revealed at last year’s Uber Ele­vate sum­mit in Wash­ing­ton D.C, the vehi­cle has been cre­at­ed by EmbraerX — Embraer’s mar­ket accel­er­a­tion and inno­va­tion arm — and is part of a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort to accel­er­ate the urban mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem and make aer­i­al rideshar­ing a real­i­ty. 

Anto­nio Campel­lo, Pres­i­dent & CEO, EmbraerX, said: “As a mar­ket accel­er­a­tor com­mit­ted to devel­op­ing solu­tions to trans­form life’s expe­ri­ences, we have been com­bin­ing human-cen­tered design think­ing with our 50-year his­to­ry of build­ing and engi­neer­ing exper­tise in a unique man­ner. These are the fac­tors behind the tech­ni­cal progress and lead­ing-edge inno­va­tions we are bring­ing to this new eVTOL con­cept.”

The lat­est vehi­cle con­cept by Embraer will use built-in redun­dant sys­tems to achieve opti­mal safe­ty, while an eight rotor sys­tem will enable span-wise lift and help low­er noise out­put.

It results from a broad range of tests and sim­u­la­tions, aim­ing at oper­a­tional opti­mi­sa­tion for the urban envi­ron­ment, con­sid­er­ing high reli­a­bil­i­ty, low oper­at­ing costs, full elec­tric pow­er and towards pro­gres­sive­ly autonomous.

EmbraerX is also part of the Uber Ele­vate Net­work, which is co-cre­at­ing the future of on-demand urban air trans­porta­tion. It has engaged in a vari­ety of tai­lored solu­tions for the ecosys­tem, includ­ing a new busi­ness plat­form, named Bea­con, which has been designed to fos­ter col­lab­o­ra­tion and syn­chro­nise avi­a­tion ser­vices com­pa­nies and pro­fes­sion­als, help­ing to keep air­craft fly­ing.

Addi­tion­al­ly, in part­ner­ship with dozens of air traf­fic con­trollers, aca­d­e­mics, pilots and indus­try experts, EmbraerX has also pro­posed a very prac­ti­cal, sim­ple and robust urban air space design to allow more air­craft to fly in urban envi­ron­ments.