You can be sure that transportation will be a nightmare for many people attending the 2024 Paris Olympics, but technology could make it slightly more bearable. Airbus, Aeroports de Paris and the Paris Transport Authority are exploring the feasibilit...
The Onyx is the result of a pretty basic demand. The future of flying cars is clearly the VTOL, or the vertical take-off and landing vehicle, and when they do become a norm, they’ll need to follow a set framework to fit into a world that was dominated for a century by four-wheeler cars. For instance, taking a VTOL to the nearest supermarket would mean having to park it in the same car-park as any regular car. That’s why the Onyx is designed the way it is… to provide that seamless transition from land-vehicles to flying-cars without necessarily needing a change in infrastructure.
The Onyx comes with a six-rotor set up, housing two rotor-units in front and four at the back (each rotor contains two propellers that rotate in opposite directions, making the Onyx have a total of 12 propellers). This arrangement gives the Onyx an overall rectangular layout, as opposed to a hexagon or square layout that would come from orienting the propellers radially or on the sides. The rectangular layout ensures the Onyx occupies the same amount of space as an SUV or a pickup, letting it comfortably fit into existing car parking spaces, and allowing conventional open parking lots to serve as docking/parking zones for VTOLs too.
Despite its large size, the Onyx is a two-person VTOL, with a single-piece glass hood that opens outwards, allowing passengers to embark and disembark from the sides, like a helicopter. This limitation is brought about, in part, by the fact that the Onyx is entirely electric-powered. Interchangeable battery packs supply power to the 12 propellers that are designed to be power efficient while greatly reducing rotor noise, making the Onyx a non-polluting VTOL in more ways than one!
Designers: Charles Champagne & Jorge Ciprian (Imaginactive)
While Elon Musk's Boring Company hopes to ease traffic congestion by burrowing under the cities of tomorrow, Uber and Bell Aerospace are taking to the skies. At CES 2019 in Las Vegas, Bell revealed the latest iteration of its Nexus VTOL aircraft,...
The guys at Thrustcycle believe that flying bikes aren’t particularly far away. In fact, they’re all set to build their own, which comprises two propellers for vertical lift-off, and two gyroscopes for stability. They’ve even built a proof-of-concept of their gyroscopes in action in one of their bike prototypes. The counter-rotating gyroscopes are powerful enough to keep the bike stable even when struck powerfully with a kick to the side, so when added to the GyroDrone concept, it should enable the vehicle to remain perfectly stable mid-flight!
The two propellers on the sides are powerful to initiate lift-off, while a thruster at the back propels you forwards… right into the future of automobiles. From two-wheeled vehicles to two-propellered vehicles!
Remember Google co-founder Larry Page's other "flying car" project that's based in New Zealand? It's called Cora, and is being developed by Zephyr Airworks to provide an autonomous VTOL-capable flying vehicle. Now the local airline Air New Zealand ha...
We've heard a bit here and there about Opener, one of the flying vehicle startups backed by Google's Larry Page. Opener specializes in vertical take off and landing (VTOL) vehicles, similar to helicopters and drones, and the company is counting on th...
Uber's flying taxi service was supposed to debut in Dallas, Los Angeles and Dubai, but its deal with the emirate fizzled out before tests could even begin. It still wants to trial UberAir outside the country, though, so it launched a search for a thi...
While most Aston Martin automobiles are designed to give you the sensation of flying while being safely grounded on four wheels against the asphalt, the Volante Vision concept may actually give you the power of flight. Debuted at the Farnborough Air Show this year, the Volante Vision is Aston Martin’s first foray into airplanes (coincidentally, Volante means Flying in quite a few European languages).
Designed to seat three people, the Volante Vision was made to provide fast, efficient and congestion-free luxurious travel in urban areas. With cities growing bigger and roads getting more congested, the British Automotive Maker believes in taking to the skies, after all, Aston Martin has always been about speed, luxury, and being a cut above.
The Volante Vision concept, a VTOL (vertical take-off and landing), occupies the space of four cars and comes with three propellers, Aston Martin’s sleek-yet-curvilinear outer body, and a comfortable interior that takes aircraft seating and turns it up a notch. Built with a hybrid-electric powertrain and self-piloting capabilities, the Volante was designed in partnership with Cranfield University, Cranfield Aerospace Solutions, and Rolls-Royce.
Well, that’s a pretty classy way to beat the traffic.
Medevac missions won't have to put more humans in danger if Tactical Robotics has its way. The Urban Aeronautics-owned firm has successfully completed its first "mission representative" demo of the Cormorant, an autonomous VTOL (vertical takeoff and...
Uber has wildly ambitious plans to send flying taxis soaring over cities, but building them will be orders of magnitude harder than anything it has ever done. As such, the company announced that it will open a Paris lab dedicated to its Elevate progr...
You can be sure that transportation will be a nightmare for many people attending the 2024 Paris Olympics, but technology could make it slightly more bearable. Airbus, Aeroports de Paris and the Paris Transport Authority are exploring the feasibilit...
While Elon Musk's Boring Company hopes to ease traffic congestion by burrowing under the cities of tomorrow, Uber and Bell Aerospace are taking to the skies. At CES 2019 in Las Vegas, Bell revealed the latest iteration of its Nexus VTOL aircraft,...
Remember Google co-founder Larry Page's other "flying car" project that's based in New Zealand? It's called Cora, and is being developed by Zephyr Airworks to provide an autonomous VTOL-capable flying vehicle. Now the local airline Air New Zealand ha...
We've heard a bit here and there about Opener, one of the flying vehicle startups backed by Google's Larry Page. Opener specializes in vertical take off and landing (VTOL) vehicles, similar to helicopters and drones, and the company is counting on th...
Uber's flying taxi service was supposed to debut in Dallas, Los Angeles and Dubai, but its deal with the emirate fizzled out before tests could even begin. It still wants to trial UberAir outside the country, though, so it launched a search for a thi...
Medevac missions won't have to put more humans in danger if Tactical Robotics has its way. The Urban Aeronautics-owned firm has successfully completed its first "mission representative" demo of the Cormorant, an autonomous VTOL (vertical takeoff and...
Uber has wildly ambitious plans to send flying taxis soaring over cities, but building them will be orders of magnitude harder than anything it has ever done. As such, the company announced that it will open a Paris lab dedicated to its Elevate progr...