One of the purposes of this blog is to inform the market, and with the workshop only warming slowly and inflation rampant, here's an analysts' guide to eVTOL due diligence that is timely as I look to crowdfunding the next step on the road.
Broadly speaking you can categorise what the mainstream press calls 'flying cars' in just a few ways. Firstly, although Joby's prototype is invariably featured it and its type are no more flying car than the helicopter. Secondly are roadable vehicles with wings or rotors that can be stowed for travel and thirdly there are futuristic vehicles like this one with a multiplicity of concealed ducted fans... like Bellwether Industries 'Solar' we see here.
Fourthly and similarly there are ostensible cars with bodies like Lamborghinis and sets of open rotors at each corner, and fifthly cars with a giant ~ albeit foldable ~ drone on the roof-rack. I won't list the examples in each category, as I can't be bothered.
Nonetheless institutional investors are apt to say that 2023 will likely be the year that either cash or physics will separate the runners or riders. Accordingly we can set aside the 'flying taxis' like that from Joby, which exist principally for the fact they identified the most obvious app and combined it with money from elsewhere. Joby is known for tripods, for instance, whilst Vertical Aerospace has been largely funded by OVO energy to the extent Vladimir Putin could be viewed as its accelerator.
Roadable vehicles with stowable wings date back to days when Pontius was a pilot, a difference being that electrification has made them altogether easier to build at least. Jumping ahead to the fifth category, these are more YouTube prank than development and an exercise in material profligacy and the last thing we (or the planet) really need.
Of the remaining 'flying cars' that do not feature stowable means of lift, those like the Airspeeder with open rotors are undoubtably the easier to pioneer: but are only flying cars to the extent pigs in lipstick are beauty queens too. Undoubtably what we see in the above photo therefore is as good as flying cars get... except they've a career that lasts as long as a Premier League manager's.
I have emailed AirCar (Category Four) to see what gives, as their star appears to have shined most brightly in 2021. Meanwhile Bellwether (pictured), though registered in the UK, actually stems from Taiwan. Quite why I don't know, because I would have thought most people (and especially in the UK) would imagine that Taiwan would give you a lot more street-cred in the field than the UK.
It means in turn that a ten-second webcheck on Companies House reveals that their CEO resigned about a fortnight before Frank Lampard left his own post at Everton FC. God loves a tryer, though, and we wish them success in the search for a replacement.
Practically though, look at it (them). Cars are increasingly made from a pressed-steel monocoque shell to which mass-produced plastic body-parts are practically snapped on after the many times you collide with the gate-post. One crack in the carbon-fibre eco-skeleton seen above, and you're trying to get back in touch with Faberge for a fix.
On a more hopeful note, I discover that the organisers of the World Taxi Congress that they attended back in 2021 are just down the road here in Manchester.
Why don't I bother them instead?
