Shut up and take my money!

Well done! This looks like a lot of fun.

The question is, can it do an auto-rotation? .... apparently not

1st: If you are from Germany OR have a German bank account: you can invest in e-volo / the Volocopter team starting from 250€ here: www.seedmatch.de/e-volo
2nd: @DLK811 - it has a parachute for the worst case. and if one rotor fails, you still have 17 others.

I'm sorry, why are they arranging the layout and form to almost exactly resemble a helicopter again? The helicopter's shape and arrangement is that way because it mostly *has* to be... with this paradigm the arrangement can be (almost) anything you can imagine! (see the newer Gizmag post about the Zee.Arrow as an example...) Did they do it this way because they thot the sprirograph pattern of the engine/prop support cage looks pretty? Awwww... how sweet...
I can understand if they intended that huge disc to double as an airfoil with good glide characteristics, in the event of total power loss, or some such practical purpose... as it is? sure, it's allowing stable flight, but quite unwieldy, too... not to mention expensive to manufacture and structurally suspect.
How about at the very least making it collapsible, so the vehicle could be more easily garaged or ported (or even roadable, maybe?) via a Hoberman sphere like mechanism or similar...
Sorry for all the negativity... I do LOVE the concept, and I believe this multi-copter-style direction is *the* future of personal flight! Kudos on the excellent progress, and I'm looking forward to the first manned flight! (Can we just think a tad outside the box, guys?)

I think that is way cool. It seems like a logical next step for quadcopters.
I agree with Jakob, since it has many rotors that take up for any couple that fails, there is no need for auto-rotation. I think the BRS is a good idea.

Excellent! Would a set of stub wings off-load the multiple props in forward flight, thereby extending the range or duration perhaps?

Elegant? Sure. Low noise? Yes. Safe? NO.
Conventional helicopters can autorotate to a safe landing even with total loss of power. If you run into a battery problem in flight with this thing, you are coming DOWN - you have no lift and no control. If you put a valuable payload into this thing - like your precious butt - you had better plan on a very large reserve of battery capacity just to be sure.

There is not just one battery, piolenc, there are several to create redundancy.

Before giving an opinion I would like to read a table on performance, weights, actual costs, etc.