We’ve talked about eVTOLs before as well. They are basically the cars of the future. eVTOL stands for electric vertical takeoff and landing. These are vehicles able to travel in the air, hover, and perform vertical take-offs. The electric part means that they can do all this while running on an electric battery.
Current battery limitations have hindered efforts in building them but with recent experimental batteries being developed, it seems that the time for eVTOLs is growing closer. Even Russia is scheduling test flights as soon as 2022. The prototype they are testing is called the Cyclocar. Which is basically a six-seater Aeromobile powered by an electric battery.
The announcement came from a federal government press release and the car is being developed by the Advanced Research Fund. Russia seems to be ahead of the competition as they already have tested a smaller scale version of their design last year. So their announcement of test flights in 2022 and goals of starting production by 2024 seem real. The test flights planned for next year won’t be a small-scale version as before but it will be the real deal. The full-scale version measures around 20.3 by 19.6 feet or 6.2 by 6 meters.
The announced specifications say a maximum speed of 155 mph or 250 km/h with a range of 311 miles or 500 km. The Cyclocar has no wings in its design and comes with four fixed-wheeled landing gear arrangements. The eVTOL is being made for military purposes and it seems that their design is going to be especially quiet and that’s something that comes in handy for military purposes.
The car is also compact and offers full thruster control for 360-degree movement. The Cyclocar is designed to land on surfaces with a 30-degree incline and dock on vertical surfaces. Russia even plans on making it available for civilian purposes as well. The announcement also included the carrying capacity of the car which is around 600 kilograms. The car will run on an electric battery with a hybrid version coming further down the line.
The design itself is pretty futuristic and it basically looks like something out of Cyberpunk 2077. You could almost imagine this eVTOL whizzing around high-rise buildings.