We are totally not surprised that Kitty Hawk’s supposed flying car is no longer a thing. The plug has been pulled on that one. Instead, the company is embarking on an electric plane proper which it dubbed Project Heaviside.
Heaviside is also a one-seater electric aircraft and it is also a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicle. It looked like a regular one-seater aircraft, but with a lot of rotors. We counted eight. And if I can be honest, Heaviside does not look elegant. It most definitely is not the future of personal air transport we have imagined.
Anywho… while it make look like a recreational airplane that takes off like a helicopter, Kitty Hawk said that Heaviside will be 100 times quieter than a helicopter.
And it is fast too. Capable of making the trip from San Jose to San Francisco in just 15 minutes and doing so while using less than half of the energy of a car, or 120 Wh per passenger mile, as opposed to say, the 2020 Nissan Leaf Plus which does about 275 Wh per mile when doing 50 mph.
Beyond that, there isn’t any more information on Heaviside to go around at this moment. However, you can see it in action in the video below.
Images: Kitty Hawk.
Source: Engadget.
