Walk out into your back yard, jump into a next-generation electric VTOL flying machine, lift off and soar your way to the office helipad: that's the dream of personal eVTOL ownership, and Jetson co-founder Tomasz Patan has lived it, in a new video.
Sweden's Jetson One aircraft is pure simplicity: a coaxial octacopter with a seat and a roll cage and enough batteries for 20 minutes of agile, buzzy flight at speeds up to 63 mph (102 km/h). It's got some limited autonomy capability; if you let go of the sticks it'll hover in place, or find somewhere to land if the battery's low, but really it's designed to be flown for fun, with a joystick and a throttle.
The machine itself might not push too many boundaries technologically, but Jetson has done a great job of presenting the experience of eVTOL flight in its videos. And in a new one released today, the company claims it's made "the world first eVTOL commute to work," as Patan straps into the Jetson One, lifts off from his back yard, and flies the thing straight to a landing pad at work.
Now look, there's no point pretending this looks anything like most folks' commute. Patan's home backs onto a broad paddock, perfect for taking off and landing in, with no close neighbors to annoy. From there, he flies straight over a lush forest area, then a small orchard, then he accelerates down a nicely mown valley, picking up what looks like some pretty serious speed, before following some power lines through some more forest and touching down on a concrete pad at work, which basically appears to be another house backing onto the wilderness.
And as to the claim of this being a world first... Well, maybe. eHang released a video of CEO Hu Huazhi flying to work three and a bit years ago, but the palatial building he took off from might not be his home, and you can just about see the takeoff and landing pads in the same follow drone shot, so they're probably not much more than a few hundred meters apart. On the other hand, the eHang aircraft was flying autonomously – but on the other other hand, it was flying over relatively unpopulated areas itself.
Either way, Jetson's run to work is a fun piece of video and worth a watch! Check it out below.
Source: Jetson Aero
