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| Joby Aviation's full size prototype in test. |
The Witness has been at forefront of transport news since then Natal Witness editor, Horace Rose, recorded the first ride in car to Durban, in 1904.
Walpole was a passenger in a tiny, 4Hp Orient Buckboard that crawled “eastwards towards the horizon where the dawn marched gloriously” at a top speed of 25 km/h.
The latest front in transport is no longer earthbound. Since we started reporting on giant drones that can carry passengers in 2017, at least seven companies are now at the final testing stages of their electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles — most of them flying on autopilot.
One of the oldest in this field, California-based Joby Aviation, this week moved the frontiers in battery range limits when it flew the longest test flight of an electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to date.
Its full-sized prototype aircraft (pictured) flew 248 km on a single charge on Monday.
Hence giant drones will yet do for small town gene pools — and estate agents — what the bicycle did for European villages, by enabling people to go courting in the next town.
“We’ve achieved something that many thought impossible with today’s battery technology,” CEO JoeBen Bevirt said in a statement. “By doing so we’ve taken the first step towards making convenient, emissions-free air travel... an everyday reality.”
These drones fly at speeds from 130 km/h in the case of China’s eHang, up to 300 km/h in the case of the eVTOL Illium jet, and all are 100 times quieter than a helicopter.
Lilium CEO Daniel Wiegand said in 2019 the company’s goals were to create a new personal transport system that doesn’t need roads, won’t emit gas or make noise, but will expand one’s “radius of life” by going much faster than today’s traffic.
In a car stuck in traffic for 30 minutes a day, that radius of life is about 30 km. Spending the same time in a plane flying at 300 km expands the “radius of life” to 150 km.
Wiegand predicts this expanded range will give people the freedom to move out of cities to scenic towns and still commute to the city as need be. Hence giant drones will yet do for small town gene pools — and estate agents — what the bicycle did for European villages, by enabling people to go courting in the next town.
