Pipistrel to reduce work on eVTOL air taxi project, but remains committed to Uber Elevate

Sloven­ian elec­tric air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er Pip­istrel has said it is ‘reduc­ing the inten­si­ty’ of its Project 801 eVTOL Air Taxi, as it favours accel­er­at­ing large car­go deliv­ery UAVs.

The com­pa­ny is an Uber part­ner, and unveiled its eVTOL con­cept at the 2nd Uber Ele­vate Sum­mit in Los Ange­les in 2019. Pre­vi­ous­ly designed as a blend­ed wing body (BWB), the new 801 will be a five-seat­ed air­craft with VTOL capa­bil­i­ties and can car­ry up to five pas­sen­gers includ­ing a pilot.

It fea­tures eight lift fans mount­ed on a lift­ing sur­face inboard of the wing, with one ded­i­cat­ed tail-mount­ed pro­peller to sup­port high-speed cruise. The 801 can reach a top speed of more than 175 mph, with a range of 60 miles.

A state­ment on its Face­book page said: “For the Project-801 eVTOL Air Taxi, with which Pip­istrel is one of Uber’s part­ners, Pip­istrel has decid­ed to reduce the inten­si­ty of devel­op­ment. The 801 project was nev­er inter­rupt­ed but is con­tin­u­ing with slowed-down pace in favour of accel­er­at­ing large car­go deliv­ery UAVs.

“We keep both projects in par­al­lel, which allows the use of the same devel­op­ment method­ol­o­gy and tools for both vehi­cles. The project has flown sev­er­al scale mod­els and per­formed full-scale sys­tem test­ing in the mean­time.

“The deci­sion to pri­ori­tise the large car­go-deliv­ery hybrid-elec­tric UAV was made based on an increas­ing amount of indi­ca­tions that due to reg­u­la­to­ry and oth­er con­straints the real­is­tic entry-into-ser­vice (EIS) is being pushed back towards 2028.

“With this, we will be look­ing for­ward to demon­stra­tions before­hand and remain com­mit­ted to par­tic­i­pat­ing as vehi­cle part­ners in the Uber Ele­vate ini­tia­tive.”

Uber still plans to roll-out its aer­i­al ride shar­ing net­work by 2023, with ini­tial ser­vices in Dal­las, Los Ange­les and Mel­bourne. As well as Pip­istrel, oth­er vehi­cle part­ners include Bell Flight, Boe­ing, Embraer, Joby Avi­a­tion, Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty and Karem Air­craft.