Remember Terrafugia Transition, a flying car from Massachusetts? Terrafugia was acquired by Chinese giant Geely in 2017, then pivoted to designing eVTOLs in transition, and will more or less shut down in 2021. Moved to China. Establishing a subsidiary, Aerofugia, in Chengdu and forming a joint venture, he entered the eVTOL air taxi business.
Aerofugia now has a full-scale prototype in the air developed from some of the later eVTOL designs by the Terrafugia team. AE200 Series Technical His demonstrator is a five-passenger electric air taxi with wide top-mounted wings and his four long propulsion pods with propellers on each end. The prop’s front bank can be tilted completely horizontally for cruising flight, while his two pods inside are connected by rear his wings and extend back to the vertical stabilizer.
Like fellow Chinese eVTOL companies Autoflight and TCab Tech, Aerofugia is pushing the market with its pilot design rather than jumping straight into the kind of autonomous air taxis eHang is already using to fly ordinary people. are planning to enter.
The AE200 prototype is China’s largest eVTOL ever flown, according to the South China Morning Post, but it’s unclear exactly how close the machine will be to the TF-2, although Aerofugia aircraft will fly between 2025 and 2025. We hope to be certified and put into service by 206.
Aerofugia
The TF-2 also seats five, but it appears to have a different cabin shape, a taller rear wing, and a pusher prop mounted behind the cabin for cruising flight. It seems that only two of the forward propellers inside him can tilt forward in cruise flight, the rest remain vertical.
Geely is only the 7th largest automaker in China, but still sells more than 2 million cars a year with an annual turnover of about $14 billion. As Aerofugia’s parent company, it brings an enormous amount of manufacturing capacity to the table, even if it’s a pretty big step in navigating between automotive and aerospace. So Aerofugia could definitely grow to be a very important player in this space.
Source: Aerofugia by South China Morning Post and Urban Air Mobility News
