Horizon Aircraft begins full-scale development of its eVTOL aircraft, full transition planned for end of 2024

Hori­zon Air­craft has announced sev­er­al key busi­ness and tech­ni­cal updates, which includes the full-scale devel­op­ment of its eVTOL air­craft.

Hori­zon hopes to suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete test­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its Cavorite X7 eVTOL quick­ly and then enter the mar­ket and ser­vice a broad spec­trum of ear­ly use cas­es. A full tran­si­tion of a large-scale pro­to­type is planned by the end of the year.

Bran­don Robin­son, CEO of Hori­zon Air­craft, said: “I am extreme­ly proud of the pace of our full-scale air­craft sys­tems devel­op­ment pro­gram, the world-class team we’re build­ing, and the game-chang­ing tech­nol­o­gy that we’re bring­ing to Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty.

“Our unique, cus­tomer-first approach pri­or­i­tizes build­ing a tough eVTOL air­craft that can oper­ate in bad weath­er, icing con­di­tions, and oth­er chal­leng­ing oper­a­tional envi­ron­ments. This strat­e­gy is gain­ing strong trac­tion with oper­a­tors, dri­ving sub­stan­tial demand.”

Key Tech­ni­cal High­lights

Flight Test Pro­gram
The large-scale pro­to­type con­tin­ues to exceed expec­ta­tions, with hun­dreds of flight tests con­duct­ed and approach­ing full tran­si­tion speed. The real-world test results are rapid­ly improv­ing the design and pro­duc­tion of the full-scale air­craft and its sub-sys­tems.

Full-Scale Air­craft Devel­op­ment
The Com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to devel­op and patent key tech­nolo­gies that under­pin its unique air­craft includ­ing the full-scale propul­sion units that are key to the HOVR Wing tech­nol­o­gy. Test­ing of the cool­ing sys­tem and pow­er tests for the full-scale propul­sion units are ongo­ing, yield­ing pos­i­tive out­comes and load test­ing results for the HOVR Wing mech­a­nism are very pos­i­tive.

Dig­i­tal Twin Devel­op­ment
The Com­pa­ny also con­tin­ues to devel­op its sophis­ti­cat­ed hard­ware-in-the-loop (HITL) dig­i­tal twin tech­nol­o­gy that has enabled a more effi­cient and rapid test­ing of the large-scale pro­to­type air­craft with thou­sands of dig­i­tal flight tests inform­ing real-world antic­i­pat­ed han­dling char­ac­ter­is­tics of the large-scale pro­to­type.

Hori­zon Aircraft’s hybrid eVTOL, the Cavorite X7, is designed to per­form at a speed of almost twice that of a com­pa­ra­ble heli­copter while oper­at­ing at a mate­ri­al­ly low­er cost.

With an esti­mat­ed max­i­mum speed of 250 miles per hour and an aver­age range of over 500 miles with fuel reserves, Hori­zon believes this air­craft, if even­tu­al­ly licensed for com­mer­cial use, would be well-posi­tioned to excel in med­ical evac­u­a­tion, crit­i­cal sup­ply deliv­ery, dis­as­ter relief, and spe­cial mil­i­tary mis­sions.

The Com­pa­ny believes that fly­ing most of the time as a nor­mal air­craft is also safer and will make the air­craft eas­i­er to cer­ti­fy than oth­er rad­i­cal new eVTOL designs.

The Cavorite X7 will be pow­ered by a hybrid elec­tric sys­tem that will recharge the bat­tery array in-flight and post-flight, while also pro­vid­ing sig­nif­i­cant sys­tem redun­dan­cy. The Com­pa­ny is con­tin­u­ing the test­ing of its large-scale pro­to­type and is in active design and man­u­fac­tur­ing of a full-scale tech­ni­cal demon­stra­tor air­craft.