PAL-V and NLR to start the development of eVTOL Flying Car

In April 2019, PAL-V and Royal NLR (Netherlands Aerospace Centre) signed a MoU for a mutual cooperation to develop an autonomous eVTOL flying car. Both companies are aiming for a market introduction of the flying car within 10 years.

Autonomous flying with an eVTOL (electrical Vertical Take-Off and Landing) should be made possible by Royal NLR and PAL-V within 10 years. At the moment PAL-V is finalising the development of the PAL-V Liberty, world's first commercial flying car that will enter the market in 2020. The PAL-V Liberty is intended for the City-to-City mobility market.

With the signing of this MoU, both parties have expressed their vision and reinforce their collaboration to improve and elevate the Urban Air Mobility market with an eVTOL flying car.

Vice President Aerospace Vehicles Collin Beers of NLR:“NLR has a strong focus on sustainability in the aviation industry. In order to do this NLR is involved in various projects to support Dutch and international partners. One of these projects will be the development of an eVTOL for Urban Air Mobility to support aviation industry worldwide.”

As Robert Dingemanse, CEO of PAL-V, continued: “This MoU is a next step in growing our company. In 2020 PAL-V will deliver the first series of the PAL-V Liberty for the City-to-City mobility market. Making it possible to fly outside of cities and drive within. With this MoU PAL-V makes another step to develop a flying car for the Urban Air Mobility market, where people can fly electrically without a pilot from one point of the city to another. A number of the technologies that we will develop together in this project will also be used for our current model, the PAL-V Liberty.”

To improve the Urban Air Mobility, PAL-V and NLR will take different aspects into consideration: safe use of airspace for not only other flying objects in the air but also for people on the ground, limiting the (noise) pollution and improving the efficiency of current propulsion systems. On top of that, the platform needs to comply with rules and regulations that still need to be developed.

“The knowledge of both parties in combination with the facilities of NLR, like the RPAS (Drones) Test Centre, multiple wind tunnels and the composite and 3D printing research institute of NLR allows us to develop a concept that meets the desire of mobility within cities and between cities without an increase in traffic congestion.” said Beers of NLR.

“The main focus of PAL-V is personal air mobility which is a high potential market for the upcoming decennia”, explained Dingemanse. “In order to successfully deliver an electric autonomous airworthy prototype for urban air mobility we will take all the stakeholders into account: creator, operator and regulator. PAL-V and NLR will therefore also look into the 'flying car taxi service'.This will allow people to use the PAL-V as a shared mobility platform instead of owning a flying car themselves, which will further reduce the traffic congestion in cities. The same approach we used during the realisation of the PAL-V Liberty. The know-how that we created until now is a solid foundation of this next project together with NLR.”