Electric Aircraft

Detroit's Airspace Experience Technologies has presented a full-scale prototype of its modular eVTOL aircraft platform, Sigma-6, an innovative airframe featuring swappable cargo and passenger pods and a functional skateboard robot to manage them.

These strangely-shaped twisted-toroid propellers look like a revolutionary (sorry) advance for the aviation and marine sectors. Radically quieter than traditional propellers in both air and water, they're also showing some huge efficiency gains.

The means of carriage needn't be the means of locomotion, says Node Air, and logistics for passengers and cargo will work better with detachable pods that can connect to air or ground vehicles as needed. It's teamed up with JetX to pursue its vision.

The Cavorite X5 is a fascinating eVTOL air taxi design, capable of splitting its wing covers apart to reveal its vertical lift fans, or closing them for high-speed, long-range cruise flight. Horizon has now started flight testing its prototype.

Hot on the heels of Lilium's Phoenix 2 demonstrator, Israel's Air has released video footage of its two-seat personal eVTOL prototype transitioning to cruise flight, marking the start of the company's bid for FAA certification.

Covering short distances with zero emissions is the modus operandi for electric aviation startups like Eviation, whose Alice plane has caught the eye of Air New Zealand as the carrier works to reduce its carbon footprint.

Kit helicopter manufacturer RotorX has stepped into the personal eVTOL fray with its own take on the manned multicopter. The Dragon promises to zip you around at up to 63 mph (101 km/h), with joystick control, auto-landing, and a ballistic parachute.

Aura Aerospace has proposed a crazy new take on advanced air mobility. The five-seat Ranger looks like Darth Vader's shuttle when it's folded up, but it promises to fly further than any normal airliner, with roof-to-roof vertical takeoff and landing.

There are very few full-size aircraft capable of transitioning between vertical takeoff and landing and wing-borne horizontal cruise flight, so it's a big deal when a company manages the feat, as Archer has now claimed. But the video is a shocker.

You'll have to pilot this next-gen aircraft yourself – although that'll be easier than you'd think. Lift Aircraft says it'll take you less than an hour to learn to fly its Hexa eVTOL, and then you're off on a unique and spectacular sightseeing trip.

Archer is targeting FAA certification by the end of 2024, and its first air taxi flights in 2025. With its Maker prototype logging successful test flights, the company has now unveiled Midnight, the four-passenger aircraft it'll push toward production.

Korean startup Plana Aero, founded by the guy that led Hyundai/Supernal's early eVTOL program, has begun work on a new long-range, hybrid-electric VTOL air taxi that'll carry up to seven people about 350 miles at speeds up to 217 mph.