Volocopter 2x – Safer Alternative to a Personal Helicopter

I've been following e-volo for several years. I think they have a winning design here, unless there is an obvious design flaw I am not seeing.

I really like these. There is something to these kind of inventions that always puts them &quot;just around the corner&quot; category. This has been going on since <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Moller_M400_Skycar" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Moller_M400_Skycar</a> in the 90&#x27;s.<p>There is probably a combination of a tendency of people to dream about flying, and how much fun it would be, combined with the ignorance of all possible hurdles, not just physical and engineering ones, but also legal and regulatory.

What I would love on these kind of announcements is a short overview of the specs (just like they make them for cars and motorcycles!)<p>- range [km]<p>- battery capacity [kWh]<p>- flight time [h]<p>- maximum load [kg]<p>- weight [kg]<p>- price [€]<p>- permissions needed to fly it<p>...<p>Instead of a very strange and convoluted website with titles like &quot;jump in and take off&quot; (what else am I gonna do with a personal helicopter?) I would love to have some hard facts.

While this is not a car replacement for everyone - the Volocopter will require a full pilot license to be flown, it should have a significant impact on small commercial and especially non-commerical flying. Helicopters are very expensive to operate and the Volocopter should bring down operation costs down to the levels of fixed-wing aircrafts, if not even below that, as it lacks any maintenance-intensive combustion engine.

&quot;Simply foolproof&quot; aka unsinkable.<p>&quot;Safety first&quot; ... if safety was the primary concern one wouldn&#x27;t ever step into a helicopter. Speed and convenience come first.<p>I would enjoy reading the market studies for these micro helicopters. Weight is a huge issue. Exactly how fat can the passengers be?

1. Helicopters (multi or single rotor) are significantly less fuel efficient than planes per distance and per time<p>2. Electric planes are just barely approaching the flying time that is anything beyond being a joke<p>3. These guys do not state their flying time<p>My guess? It is so bad that it is not worth mentioning.

Height control seems to be directly on the cyclic, without the combined height&#x2F;throttle handle. I do not see yaw pedals, either.<p>Controls of this aircraft seem to be different enough from conventional helicopter (that at least license hours were flown in) to be a serious disadvantage for potential buyers. Another consideration could be how this thing reacts to wind gusts and how different that handles compared to conventional heli. These things could be important factors for potential customers.

Are multiple rotor blades more or less efficient than a single large rotor? Also, could a normal helicopter be adapted to use these control systems to make them easier to fly?

I think the big issue with this sort of scheme would be noise. Small, heavily loaded props will be super loud. There are a lot of them in this case. The noise wouldn&#x27;t linearly increase with the number of propellers but it would increase with the addition of each one.

The site is not mobile friendly - images weren&#x27;t scaled on mobile, could not be seen, only their left side, and site could not be aide scrolled. Imho a marketing site should be completely mobile friendly.<p>I recommend fixing this.

Considering how people drive cars, this is very scary.<p>I do believe we&#x27;ll see things like this flying around in the near future, but I&#x27;ve always thought they&#x27;d be self-driving.<p>Very cool, though (besides the vaporware).

Test flight video from last year: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;OazFiIhwAEs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;OazFiIhwAEs</a>

I would have assumed 12 motors is 11x more chances of failure than a helicopter.