eVTOL

XPeng affiliate HT Aero has unveiled an outrageous flying car design that it claims is "planned for roll-out in 2024." It looks like an electric Bugatti hypercar with a pair of huge, auto-folding props in the style of the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey.

If anyone can think of a more perfect name for a personal eVTOL, we're listening! Sweden's Jetson Aero has already sold out the 2022 production run of this cute little single-seat kit build, which is capable of zooming along at 63 mph.

Israel's Air One is a handsome two-seat, 155-mph, 110-mile machine with fold-up wings, focused on fun and practicality. Fascinatingly, it's also a winged design that appears to have no dedicated horizontal thrusters or tilting propulsion.

eHang certainly won't be alone in the skies when China's eVTOL air taxi market opens up. Two new projects have just been announced: the Autoflight V1500M, and the Pantuo Pantala – which frankly should be expecting a letter from Lilium's lawyers.

The fascinating CycloTech eVTOL prototype has taken its first flight tests, running its paddle steamer-style "Cyclogiro" propulsion system, which offers some interesting advantages over typical multirotor-style designs.

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.

The new technologies Honda plans to pursue in the coming decades include an eVTOL for inter-city transport, a robot that will act as an avatar for users to perform tasks remotely, and a renewable energy system for the Moon.

After shutting down the Vahana program in 2019, Airbus has revealed the new four-seat electric VTOL aircraft it's taking to the air taxi market for 2025. And while it's very pretty, the new CityAirbus's spec sheet is surprisingly underwhelming.

Craft Aero's nine-seat hybrid-electric VTOL aircraft promises 1,000-mile, 345-mph roof-to-roof inter-city hops – and it does so using a diamond-shaped blown box wing configuration and flap-vectored thrust design different to anything we've seen.

Lilium's eVTOL is vastly different to anything else in the air taxi world, using 36 small ducted fans in place of larger rotors. One of the key advantages, says Lilium, is the reduced noise signature – and now we get to hear it for the first time.

Paragon VTOL Aerospace is working on a second-gen version of its nine-seat Soar air taxi design, and it's settled on hydrogen-burning engines that'll deliver monster range figures between 300-900 miles (480-1,450 km) depending on passenger numbers.

The UK's Samad Aerospace is making progress with half-scale prototypes of its E-Starling eVTOL aircraft, and has now started taking pre-orders for a smaller cargo drone using a similar design and semi-vectored thrust propulsion system.