Both Companies Aim For A Market Introduction Within 10 Years

Autonomous flying with an eVTOL (electrical Vertical Take-Off and Landing) should be made possible by Royal NLR and PAL-V within 10 years, according to officials from both companies.

At the moment PAL-Vis finalizing the development of the PAL-VLiberty, world’s first commercial flying car that will enter the market in 2020. The PAL-V Liberty is intended for the City-to-City mobility market. With the signing of this MoU, both parties express their vision and reinforce their collaboration to improve and elevate the Urban Air Mobility market with an eVTOL flying car.

"NLR has a strong focus on sustainability in the aviation industry. In order to do this NLR is involved in various projects to support Dutch and international partners," said NLR vice president, Aerospace Vehicles Collin Beers. "One of these projects will be the development of an eVTOL for Urban Air Mobility to support aviation industry worldwide.”

“This MoU is a next step in growing our company," said Robert Dingemanse, CEO of PAL-V. "In 2020 PAL-V will deliver the first series of the PAL-V Liberty for the City-to-City mobility market. Making it possible to fly outside of cities and drive within. With this MoU, PAL-V makes another step to develop a flying car for the Urban Air Mobility market, where people can fly electrically without a pilot from one point of the city to another. A number of the technologies that we will develop together in this project will also be used for our current model, the PAL-V Liberty.”

To improve Urban Air Mobility, PAL-V and NLR will take different aspects into consideration: safe use of air space for not only other flying objects in the air, but also for people on the ground, limiting the (noise) pollution and improving the efficiency of current propulsion systems.

Additionally, the platform needs to comply with rules and regulations yet to be developed. “The knowledge of both parties in combination with the facilities of NLR, like the RPAS (Drones) Test Center, multiple wind tunnels and the composite and 3D printing research institute of NLR allows us to develop a concept that meets the desire of mobility within cities and between cities without an increase in traffic congestion.” said Beers.

“The main focus of PAL-V is personal air mobility which is a high potential market for the upcoming decennia”, said Dingemanse. “In order to successfully deliver an electric autonomous airworthy prototype for urban air mobility, we will take all the stakeholders into account: creator, operator and regulator. PAL-V and NLR will therefore also look into the ’flying car taxi service’.

"This will allow people to use the PAL-V as a shared mobility platform instead of owning a flying car themselves, which will further reduce the traffic congestion in cities. The same approach we used during the realization of the PAL-V Liberty. The know-how that we created until now is a solid foundation of this next project together with NLR.”

(Source: Pal-V news release)

FMI: www.pal-v.com