23 May 2017
A flying car based on an already flying drone is being developed by US company Metro Skyway. The CityHawk flying car will have four seats, use hydrogen as a fuel, have autonomous controls and be vertical takeoff and landing.
Development is expected to take about five years and will use technology already in place on a large one-ton unmanned drone called Cormorant produced by its parent company, Urban Aeronautics. The Cormorant has logged 200 flying hours and can be seen in the video below dating from March 2017.
It uses what UrbanAero calls Fancraft technology with internal rotors. The vehicle will initially be powered by jet fuel, but will be designed from the outset to convert to liquid hydrogen and eventually to compressed hydrogen, once such options become commercially feasible.
“CityHawk is unique in combining a compact, car-sized design that has a four passenger capacity, no exposed rotors or wings, no batteries and potential for zero carbon emissions,” said the company.
“Perhaps most critical is that CityHawk achieves these groundbreaking qualities while meeting all design criteria that are the basis for eventual FAA/EASA certification. This paves the way for true, unrestricted commercial viability.”
The CityHawk will be quite wide, given four seats abreast.
While CityHawk will initially be piloted by a human pilot, the vehicle’s flight control and flight management systems will be capable of a high degree of autonomy from the outset. The technology is being developed and tested on the Cormorant prototype which already flies fully autonomously.
