Civil Urban Mobility
Heaviside is a single-passenger vehicle with a range of 100 miles, speeds of up to 180 mph, and the ability to fly over cities
Personal Flights, a Closer Reality With various eVTOL aircraft taking shape across the globe to transform the air mobility and everyday commute, some have even started to successfully test manned flights
Photograph: Kitty Hawk
By Ayushee Chaudhary Almost every person dwelling in an urban city especially a metropolitan one, across the globe has had an encounter with congested roads, loud honking, cars moving bumper to bumper, delays to the destination and accompanied frustration. No one would mind commuting in a traffic-less city having some space for their own vehicles. While this may seem like a difficult task looking at the current rate at which urbanisation is expanding, the upcoming eVTOL (electric Vertical Take-off and Landing) human flight aircraft are coming with the promise of a different reality. Kitty Hawk, a start-up building electric flight transportation solutions, is strenuously working to eradicate the traffic from roads. Sebastian Thrun, CEO of Kitty Hawk stated that the mission of the company is to get rid of traffic eventually and make traf-
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ISSUE 11 • 2020
fic congestion a matter of the past. “Our vision at Kitty Hawk is to free the world from traffic. For this vision to become reality, we don’t have to build new infrastructure. Unlike the nation’s highways, which require enormous resources for construction and maintenance, the highways in the sky don’t require any pavement thanks to the sheer limitless potential of the sky,” says Thrun. Kitty Hawk stems from a legacy which is being built for the future to create the next generation of vehicles for everyday flight. The company has tested 100s of eVTOL prototypes by now. Nearly five years ago, Kitty Hawk had started the Flyer project. Seen as a revolution in personal flight, the Flyer was designed to be an ultralight aircraft. This was a single-seater eVTOL powered by 10 independent lift fans and operated between three to ten feet off the water. At 250 pounds empty
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