Aircraft

Tetra demonstrates its buy 'n' fly single-seat eVTOL in California

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Tetra's Mk5 personal eVTOL is set to start deliveries in 2022
Tetra Aviation
Tetra's Mk5 personal eVTOL is set to start deliveries in 2022
Tetra Aviation
A 100-mph eVTOL with 100-mile range you can buy as a kit plane
Tetra Aviation
The Mk5 prototype has flown, and was on display at OshKosh this year
Tetra Aviation
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Japan's Tetra Aviation plans to start delivering single-seat electric VTOL lift and cruise aircraft to customers by the end of 2022, and it has now released video footage of its Mk-5 aircraft making test flights in California.

A lightweight personal fun machine for pilots under 200 lb (90.7 kg), the Mk-5 places a slim cabin between two wide wings. The front and rear wings have a total of 16 propulsion pods attached, each with two vertical lift rotors fore and aft, making for a total of 32 lift fans for VTOL operation. A single cruise prop on the back enables cruise speeds up to 160 km/h (100 mph), and a 13.5 kWh battery offers flight ranges up to 160 km (100 miles).

The multiple lift motors provide a solid degree of propulsion redundancy, and there may be a ballistic parachute included as a last resort safety option.

Tetra says it's already taken an unspecified number of orders for the Mk5, and plans to start delivering them to customers at the end of 2022. In the USA, they'll be registered as homebuilt/experimental aircraft. So you'll need a private pilot's license and each build will need to be inspected and registered by the FAA.

The company has now released video of a test flight taken in rural California, showing the Mk5 SN2 prototype flying unmanned, and apparently only in VTOL operation. Still, it's a pretty handsome thing if you can ignore the wobble in the wings, and it's a simple and sensible enough design that'll draw plenty of attention wherever it's wheeled out.

Check out the video below.

Source: Tetra Aviation

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6 comments
guzmanchinky
Well, as a pilot who has owned an experimental, I can say this thing looks cool, but be careful, that experimental tag comes with a lot of restrictions...
BlueOak
With fault tolerance of only 2 of 36 fans, it is good thing it has further fail safe glide capability and parachute.
McDesign
Ah - "Tetra"! I at first read "Tatra" and thought, "cool! A Czech rear-engined aluminum hemi V8 . . ."
Towerman
There is something really odd about these full sized winged concepts... they just don't look right, drag must be high on these, bring back the quads and hexacopters. JOBY is doing Great, but Where's SKAI, where is the CITY Airbus These are unclutteted KISS designs perfect for city flying and Whats the latest on the CityHawk ?
christopher
@Towerman: "city flying" => never going to happen. Experimental are not allowed anywhere near cities, and anything that will kill people in the streets when it falls out of the sky will never be certified. If it cannot glide *without power* to a safe kill-nobody location, it will never be allowed to fly over people.

It's pretty obvious, even to dim people: no authority is ever going to take on the risk of certifying anything that can kill innocent people just because the owner did something stupid (e.g. forgot to look at the battery level, ran into powerlines or a building, let something overheat, flew with degraded batteries, sucked in a bird/debris, ...) or the vehicle design was stupid (e.g. cannot glide, relies entirely on hundreds of hobby-class electronics not failing, contains uncertified open-source software, fails to accomodate cyber threats adequately, ...)

You might not care about your own life, but the FAA *definitely* cares about everyone else's life below your sketchy VTOL dream-craft!
Towerman
@christopher
Is this a Joke ? I had to read this twice...lol..

Hobby grade electronics and software ?? CLEARLY you have no clue as to reliable the best of the best flight controller hardware and software are.

No wonder you post these delusional opinions.

And FIY a 3d helicopter requires 100s of more sophisticated calculations than any full sized quadcopter ever will utilize.

Modern 3d gyro's is beyond overkill and robust than will ever be needed for full scale. Besides that, live and learn ;)
NOW..
Lets see...how many people have lost their lives in helicopters not only on the ground in cities but outside of it as well...
(hint too many to mention) And you
Cannot disprove it.

Your "glide" is useless if you do not have enough headspeed and that is a failsafe FAIL
Your glide is useless if a linkage fails which happens all the time so Another fail.
Your glide is useless if your tailrotor box breaks and you cannot control where to land as happens so many times,Another fail and there is no redundency the evidence is everywhere. You can disprove ZERO of the just mentioned. And i can post countless of physical and written FAA evidence for it ;)

So please don't come and preach so
Called failsafe measures of helicopters against the utmost reliability of direct drive electric motors which are redundant. And overkill.in terms if hardware and software safety.

Helicopters, these sophisticated failure prone mechanical machines have been flying and crashing for decades without losing its certification.
So sorry for you EVTOLS becoming mainstream will happen there is absolutely no two ways about that.

Evtols are much safer and by magitudes less complicated than helicopters.
And Sorry you are Again wrong. EVTOLS
Is already flying in China

I'ts just a matter of time before gets more than just an experimental license from the FAA.