Airspeeder, the first “flying car” race successfully completed

Airspeeder announced that what is termed as the “first electric flying car race” in the world has been successfully completed during the inaugural event of the EXA series. As we know, for some time Airspeeder has been working on a very special championship in which they must compete specific eVTOL developed by Alauda Aeronautics and which has been renamed as the “F1 of the skies”. Initially, these particular aircraft will be controlled remotely by pilots. In the future, the focus is on vehicles in which the pilots will be directly on board.

In November 2021 Airspeeder had conducted a first demonstration, a sort of “drag race” between two remotely piloted eVTOLs. These were the same aircraft that were used in the first race of the EXA series. To prepare for the competition, the pilots spent thousands of hours in the simulator and carried out over 270 test flights.

According to Airspeeder, the success of this first race is an important step towards the manned competitions planned for 2024.

The Airspeeder pilots challenged each other Zephatiali Walsh and Fabio Tishcler who remotely controlled their 4.1-meter eVTOLs along a 1km “virtual” route. According to what was said, the organization of the tender was not easy as a particularly complex infrastructure dedicated to the management of aircraft was set up which also included, among other things, a 5G network.

The race took place in two sessions which also included changing the battery. In the end, it was Walsh who won this first opening race of the EXA series. The organizers let it be known that new races will be held in the future with more participants. For the founder of Airspeeder, Matt Pearson, this race is just the beginning. The company shared a short video with excerpts from the competition where eVTOLs are seen in action.

What is shown is interesting and it seems that there are premises for something good. The potential of the aircraft and their technology was shown and, therefore, it will be very interesting to find out how this project will evolve and if this series will really be extended to more participants, up to competing with human pilots on board.