Honda confirms the development of its own eVTOL aircraft, which will feature a gas turbine hybrid power unit

Hon­da Motor Com­pa­ny has intro­duced new tech­nol­o­gy ini­tia­tives as part of its 2030 Vision, which includes the devel­op­ment of an eVTOL air­craft.

The Japan­ese auto­mo­tive man­u­fac­tur­er says this direc­tion leads to the ful­fil­ment of Honda’s 2030 Vision of serv­ing peo­ple world­wide with the ‘joy of expand­ing their life’s poten­tial’. In a press release, Hon­da added it is ‘thor­ough­ly com­mit­ted to con­tribut­ing to the real­i­sa­tion of soci­ety with zero envi­ron­men­tal impact, zero traf­fic col­li­sions and new ini­tia­tives that enable it to take on chal­lenges in new areas.’

As well as the eVTOL air­craft, the new areas also include an avatar robot with the goal to expand the range of human abil­i­ty and a new chal­lenge in the field of out­er space.

Kei­ji Oht­su, Pres­i­dent and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Direc­tor of Hon­da R&D Co., Ltd, said: “All of the ini­tia­tives we intro­duced today are for the chal­lenges Hon­da takes on in new areas, but the under­ly­ing pas­sion of Hon­da to use our tech­nol­o­gy to make people’s lives more enjoy­able remains unchanged.

“Ever since the company’s found­ing, the well­spring of Honda’s chal­lenges has always been the peo­ple at Hon­da who gen­er­ate orig­i­nal tech­nolo­gies and ideas. Through the cre­ation of new mobil­i­ty, Hon­da will con­tin­ue striv­ing to change the val­ue peo­ple place on mobil­i­ty and make pos­i­tive changes to our soci­ety.”

The com­pa­ny is lever­ag­ing its elec­tri­fi­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies for its gas tur­bine hybrid pow­er unit, which will extend the air­craft’s range and enable it to pro­vide pas­sen­gers with city-to-city trans­porta­tion. Hon­da will also cre­ate a new ‘mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem’, with the air­craft at its core and con­nect­ed. with mobil­i­ty prod­ucts on the ground.

No fur­ther spec­i­fi­ca­tion details about the air­craft, such as cruise speed, range and pas­sen­ger capac­i­ty have been revealed.

Hon­da’s entry into the eVTOL air­craft and urban air mobil­i­ty mar­kets rep­re­sents anoth­er auto­mo­tive giant look­ing to com­pete with the likes of Archer, Joby Avi­a­tion, Lil­i­um, Volo­copter and Ver­ti­cal Aero­space. Oth­er notable exam­ples include Toy­ota, which has invest­ed in Joby, Rolls-Royce, which is already pro­duc­ing a range of propul­sion units for elec­tric air­craft and Stel­lan­tis — for­mer­ly Fiat Chrysler — is part­ner­ing with Archer.

In addi­tion to clean oper­a­tion real­ized by elec­tri­fi­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies, Hon­da has said its eVTOL air­craft will meet safe­ty lev­els equiv­a­lent to that of com­mer­cial avi­a­tion, realised by its sim­ple struc­ture and decen­tralised propul­sive sys­tem and quiet­ness due to rel­a­tive­ly small diam­e­ter of rotors.

Hon­da says this makes it pos­si­ble for the eVTOL air­craft to take off and land in the mid­dle of a city with­out caus­ing noise issues. To address the cur­rent issue of lim­it­ed bat­tery capac­i­ty and realise user-friend­ly inter-city trans­porta­tion with longer range, Hon­da will lever­age its elec­tri­fi­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies and devel­op Hon­da eVTOL equipped with a gas tur­bine hybrid pow­er unit.

In addi­tion to elec­tri­fi­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies, Hon­da’s eVTOL air­craft will fea­ture tech­nolo­gies Hon­da has amassed in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent areas such as com­bus­tion, aero­dy­nam­ics and con­trol tech­nolo­gies.