As personal air vehicles go as distinct from flying taxis, there's currently only one game in town and that's Jetson, who've done for Sweden what Spotify did earlier and proven that everything need not necessarily emerge from California... just most of it.
After a four-month break whilst I needed to step away from the vehicle, I've had to ask myself what counts? What's in the DNA?
And the conclusion I've come to is that it has to be about moving people a shortish distance in three dimensions in the simplest superstructure possible, by using wholly unique home-grown means. I don't believe that you succeed by copying everyone else in the longer term, and that goes for products as well as it does for personalities.
So we'll take it from the top ~ literally ~ and draw upon the rich inventory that is the WIPO patent specification and in particular, this configuration for eight or more rotors.
Electrical air vehicles have been something of a fool's errand, as they looked like they could replace the main-rotor of helicopters at a stroke. They did so on the shoulders of drones, which got away with as few as four maintenance-free means of lift at each corner.
What distinguished the develop of drones and subsequently eVTOLs was the fact that the majority of people involved had never been (nor intended to be) pilots. And when it comes to life-or-death scenarios like engine failures, it's the gladiator in the arena that counts and not the spectators.
As a consequence, the number of motors on practical multicopters has proliferated, and as things stand eight is the minimum for entry to the ball.
Why though abandon the X-8 configuration of over-and-under power units used by most commercial drones and current eVTOLs? Well the estimates for the losses of aerodynamic efficiency involved I have heard range from an eerily precise 14% to T-motor's own estimate (or warning) of as much as 25%.
And that's far too much power to trade at the outset.
The advantage of the outline above however is that it continues as a simple four-point proposition, with pairs of motors addressed as modules that I'd describe as cassettes as they relate to two rotors, or bogeys where they are attached (over-and-under) in a set of four.
The only addition to the configuration as originally conceived are those torsion bars around the perimeter, pictured in black.
The dots featured at each corner of the centre-section we'll investigate anon.
I had intended to discontinue this blog ~ Jetson thriving without one ~ but relented as the stats disclosed a consistent readership. If you're reading this, then rest assured you make a difference.
