Here we can see the arrangement of the lift motors, pitched 11.25" off the back end of each upper spar and with the same clearance forward. I like to think that these are to be optional, like the preference for two or else four wheel drive on your choice of car.
Thinking about the pros and cons, bear in mind how we saw yesterday that the stock two-motored cat weighs in at 8.00kg... well these four babies along with the required equipment (including batteries) add a further 3.20kg, which is a forty percent uplift.
That's a lot of extra cost and weight for the facility to fly your craft over to the water, and subsequently to facilitate shallow (or next to no) water operation ~ but then that's horses for courses, isn't it?
Meanwhile if you're asking yourself whether these lift motors can earn their keep, well at 75% grunt they're lifting about 3.20kg in themselves, or four times their own weight.
You can see though how vectoring propellers hit the spot, by reducing the additional weight by fifty percent... although not quite, in view of the added weight of all that is required for vectoring.
It is worth noting that among personal eVTOLs, nearly all have fixed motors viz. Hexa, Pivotal, Jetson and Ehang whilst flying taxis are practically all vectoring types. What it tells you is that where vast budgets are available from corporate investors, developers have taken the plunge and taken the added burden of vectoring upon themselves in the hope of flying further and faster than the competition.
That's not something we need worry about, which is the joy of building boats instead.
(And the props will be removed now, though I'll mark each spot for future reference.)
