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He should come to the UK... we're there already.

Tunnel Vision

Said it before, but electrification allows old ideas to be revisited in ways that were simply not feasible prior... as this maritime cargo drone that Hopflyt has developed amply demonstrates.

Tunnel or channel wings are not new, but were previously married to conventional reciprocating aero-engines and the problem was ~ and remains ~ the fact there is no easy way to fix a conventional engine to what is effectively a missing wing-spar.

The trick with the model above is that the inverted-arch section of the wing vectors along with the motor (around the spar) for hovering flight; meaning that allied with an onboard turbine generator, the aircraft is ideal to meet logistical tasks at sea.

Expect to see more of such generators whilst awaiting ongoing improvements to the energy density of batteries, incidentally. They can already be purchased online from Chinese retail platforms, and will undoubtedly evolve themselves as a short-term fix that may (like much else) prove to be a long-term remedy to range and endurance issues bedevilling electrical drones used offshore.

Electrifying

There are bright-ish spots in the continuing decline of the UK, and I say bright-ish because no sooner than this tech was perfected at a university college in Oxford, it would be bought up by Mercedes: revenue of business here being diverted to states abroad at the soonest opportunity.

But as the UK powers down, electrical motors are clearly powering up and this axial flow type producing an insane 1000hp whilst weighing just twelve kilos or 25lb.

The inventor Ray Kurzweil said that we should design for the future, for what might be rather than just what happens to be.

In view of advances in motors, batteries and solar power you might want sea-going drones to run on petrol for the current range and endurance that it would provide; but going forward you'd be equally insane not to transition to electrical power at the soonest.

Whether it applies to EVs however is something else altogether: growing numbers are reverting to gasoline upon the sooner-than-expected expiry of their EVs, when they realise they're buying into a subscription model instead of just a car.