Airbus is expecting to power on its CityAirbus NextGen eVTOL prototype before the end of the year, with the aircraft in the final stages of assembly at Airbus Helicopters’ facility in Donauworth, Germany.
“It’s now out of the jig — it’s on skids, the wing, tail, and propellers are there, and the battery pack has arrived,” Balkiz Sarihan, head of urban air mobility (UAM) at Airbus, told Vertical. “Literally every day there’s something new coming in.”
The CityAirbus NextGen program was launched in 2021, following on from Airbus’s CityAirbus and Vahana demonstration programs. The aircraft is powered by eight propellers and 16 electrical power units, with dual systems for redundancy. It will carry one pilot with three passengers in a banked seat at the rear of the cabin.
The multi-rotor aircraft has been in assembly throughout 2023 in preparation for the start of its flight test campaign in 2024. The first phases of this campaign will take place in a 10,700-square-foot (1,000-square-meter) dedicated eVTOL test center in Donauworth, which itself has been built over the year.
The ability to begin the campaign indoors will ensure against any weather-related challenges that would otherwise be presented by the German winter, said Sarihan.
“Then we continue to open up the flight test envelope as you would expect us to do on any other product,” she said.
In addition to a main hangar, the test center includes separate rooms for subsystem testing. The grand opening of the facility will be held “sometime in the new year,” said Sarihan, along with a first public display of the prototype.
The flight test campaign is due to take place throughout 2024, in parallel with the maturation of various technologies set to be incorporated into the aircraft, such as the “Millennium” single stick control and Vertex autonomy system.
“This parallel path really saves us quite a lot of time and investment,” said Sarihan.
Airbus has been clear from the outset that its plan is to enter the eVTOL market with a piloted product, but the initial test phase of CityAirbus NextGen will be remotely piloted.
In addition to the flight test campaign, the upcoming year will see Airbus continue working on the broader eVTOL ecosystem.
The company has partnered with 30 organizations and companies — including the state and federal government, technology companies, universities and Munich airport — to establish what it calls the Air Mobility Initiative (AMI) in Bavaria. Together, they’re developing and testing a full urban air mobility ecosystem, from defining a concept of operations (ConOps), to building the first version of a vertiport.
“We will actually start to fly subscales in the exact missions of the eVTOL next year,” said Sarihan. “This will be the first test of the ConOps’ design.”
The company also expects to build upon its existing pool of global partnerships, having already announced agreements with Chilean operator Ecocopter, Saudi Arabia’s The Helicopter Company, and Japanese operator Hiratagakuen to better understand the urban air mobility markets in those regions.
Earlier this year, Airbus announced a partnership with the Norwegian Air Ambulance Foundation to explore the use of CityAirbus NextGen in the emergency medical services (EMS) mission.
“What we’re working on is not only how they would like the aircraft to evolve in future generations, but how an eVTOL will fit into an existing working HEMS system,” said Sarihan.
Early discussions with the foundation showed that they think eVTOLs might best be used to deliver medical care rather than to transport patients, she revealed.
“[For the foundation], the interest of the eVTOL is in rapid deployment of the right medication, right personnel and the right intervention,” she said. “It’s not replacing [helicopters or ground ambulances], but it’s providing an extra layer of service.”
While 2024 will be another year of major development for the CityAirbus NextGen eVTOL, it will also be a momentous year for the wider eVTOL industry, with fellow manufacturer Volocopter aiming to launch commercial services in Paris at the 2024 Summer Olympics. Sarihan said Airbus will be watching with great interest.
“All of this puts a lot of attention, a lot of excitement, a lot of energy and some funding as well [towards the eVTOL sector],” she said. “But we also have to make sure that all of these [commercial launches] are executed really, really well. Everybody wants it to go smoothly, to go safely, to excite the public to show the first demonstration, and then keep them with us for the next step.”
