Airbus successfully conducted the first test flight of Vahana,
an autonomous electric VTOL device. The test took place on January 31,
reports The Verge; Aerotaxi held in the air, at a height of five meters,
53 seconds.
As part of the Vahana project, Airbus plans to build a fleet of
autonomous multi-rotor electric VTOLs that could be used in the urban
environment for individual transport. The project was launched in early
2016 – it is being developed by A³, a subsidiary of Airbus. Since that
time, we’ve heard about Vahana several times: so, in November of last
year it became known that its high-grade prototype Alpha One was
transported to a special hangar in Pendleton, Oregon, where they began
to prepare for flight tests (they were planned before the end of 2017 of
the year). Alpha One is 6.2 meters wide, 5.7 meters long, 2.8 meters
high and weighs 745 kilograms.
Airbus plans to make the first ready-to-manufacture version of the air taxi by 2020.
