Pages with tag Electric Flight
- Kitty Hawk Flyer - electric powered quad-copter electric motorcycle thingymajob: Electric drive trains give vehicle designers the freedom to think up what would have been wackadoodle ideas just a few years ago. Case in point are variants on the Quadcopter, meaning a vehicle with multiple downward facing propellers. A quadcopter has four downward facing propellers, and I've seen designs with a dozen or more propellers. The Kitty Hawk Flyer appears to have eight propellers, making it an Octocopter? The initial reporting on this calls it a 'flying car', but it's clearly not a car, and it's clearly meant for use in limited scenarios. The Kitty Hawk Flyer is going on sale later in 2017, so this isn't an early prototype like so many of the n-Copter's for humans, but is close to production. Going by the video it looks like a flying electric motorcycle that would be fun. One wonders how much of a control system is on-board or whether the pilot steers merely by leaning. Going by the website, it's going to be ultra-expensive. Going by the legal and technical limitations of this incarnation, the Kitty Hawk Flyer will see its primary use as a playtoy at peoples' lake house. Who knows whether legal and technical limitations can be transcended to allow this type of vehicle to be used for regular travel around cities?