ZURI reveals sustainable interior design concept for its hybrid-powered VTOL aircraft

ZURI has unveiled the inte­ri­or con­cept in its hybrid VTOL air­craft for region­al advanced air mobil­i­ty, reflect­ing the com­pa­ny’s com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­i­ty and low­er­ing its envi­ron­men­tal impact on air trans­port.

Since 2017, ZURI, based in the Czech Repub­lic, has been devel­op­ing its three- to four-seater air­craft which is capa­ble of trans­port­ing pas­sen­gers and car­go dis­tances exceed­ing 600km. It uses com­bi­na­tion of lithi­um cells and a bio­fu­el-enabled tur­bine gen­er­a­tor, trav­el­ling at speeds of between 250–300km/h.

Last month, ZURI start­ed car­ry­ing out ground tests of its tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor and intends to test fly in hov­er mode next month. As part of its devel­op­ment, the com­pa­ny has released pic­tures of its inte­ri­or con­cept in its Exec­u­tive and VIP ver­sions, which will be part of a new mod­el line called ZURI 2.0.

The Exec­u­tive Ver­sion has space for four pas­sen­gers and a pilot, while the VIP has space for three pas­sen­gers and a pilot. The front seat swivels in both ver­sions to allow direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion between pas­sen­gers, while the onboard info­tain­ment sys­tem offers full inter­net access, enter­tain­ment and detailed infor­ma­tion about the cur­rent flight.

ZURI has said the wall and ceil­ing pan­els are expect­ed to be made of a com­pos­ite based on flax3 fibers, upon suc­cess­ful cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of such com­pos­ites. Flax-based mate­r­i­al or sim­i­lar plant-based mate­ri­als can cre­ate a robust sup­port struc­ture, which is sub­se­quent­ly cov­ered only by a thin sur­face lay­er of the visu­al mate­r­i­al.

As a result, such tech­nol­o­gy can triple the flex­ur­al bend­ing stiff­ness, decrease mate­r­i­al use and weight while improv­ing vibra­tion damp­ing.

The use of com­pos­ite mate­ri­als based on flax fibers offers up to 70 per cent sav­ings in plas­tics and approx­i­mate­ly 50 per cent sav­ings in parts weight. The uphol­stery fab­rics used on the Exec­u­tive seats have been select­ed for over­all com­fort and aes­thet­ics but also for their envi­ron­men­tal impact. 3D-knit mate­r­i­al, well-known in the fash­ion and active footwear indus­tries, which is expect­ed to be used for seats, com­pris­es 100 per cent recy­cled PET bot­tles.

The ZURI’s VIP inte­ri­or con­cept could also take advan­tage of syn­thet­ic leather instead of ani­mal leather. It is a well-doc­u­ment­ed fact that ani­mal leather is the most envi­ron­men­tal­ly tox­ic tex­tile of all. The syn­thet­ic leather for uphol­stery in the VIP ver­sion is planned to be made of veg­etable fibers com­bined with PU obtained main­ly from recy­cled mate­r­i­al.

Set up com­pa­ny founder Michal Illich, ZURI’s goal is to change the way peo­ple expe­ri­ence on-demand, door-to-door mid-range flights, by trav­el­ling on your own sched­ule and with­out air­ports.

In an inter­view with eVTOL Insights ear­li­er this year, Illich sug­gest­ed ZURI can build an air­craft which can trav­el fur­ther than 700km in the future, using hybrid-pow­ered tech­nol­o­gy.

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