E-Flying Cars Start Competitive Racing

 Airspeeder EXA Race in Australia

                                            Source:  Alauda

Start of the Grand Prix Series of eVTOLs

An unprecedented, electric flying car league called Airspeeder, based in London, just completed the world's 1st flying car races in South Australia.  The event is called the EXA series and it kicked off the beginning of a global Grand Prix series of racing electric flying cars.  This racing concept is important.  As is the case with automobiles, many big technology breakthroughs for consumer cars come from the tech advancements made on race cars.  These flying races are designed to greatly advance the technologies underpinning flying cars or eVTOLs (electric, vertical takeoff and landing vehicles).

Alauda Speeders

The eVTOL races are the brainchild of eVTOL maker Alauda Aeronautics of Adelaide, Australia.  2 Alauda-made eVTOLs, both 13.5 feet in length, participated.  Both were remotely controlled with no humans onboard.  The vehicles, which are highly maneuverable like an advanced drone, are called Speeders.  The race took place over 1 KM of digital sky track.  The remote pilots spent many hours in training.  The winner is digital Captain Zephatali Walsh who beat digital Captain Favio Tishcler in a very tight, intense, high-speed race that included speeds of 63 mph and lap turns of 39.9 seconds.

Big Technologies Engaged

The technology involved to make the world's 1st eVTOL race possible is awesome.  Alauda built Augmented Reality (AR) sky tracks, highly advanced 5G networks, pilot control stations, race control stations and engineering and team control stations.  They also had to establish race rules and protocols for safety, logistics and race management. 

Real eVTOLs

The actual real world Airspeeder eVTOL is a quadcopter that weighs 285 pounds.  Its electric motor has the same amount of power as an Audi SQ7 SUV.   It can climb to altitudes of 1,640 feet and accelerate from 0 to 62 mph in 2.8 seconds.  The plan is to have human captains fly real-world Airspeeders in competitive racing in 2024.  According to Airspeeder founder Matt Pearson: "Every transformative moment in human transportation has been accelerated by motorsports".  Thanks to him, we are about to witness global Grand Prix's in flying cars. The technology in these flying race cars is a look at the future of flying cars as urban passenger vehicles in the near future.