Japanese company A.L.I. Technologies showed the first flight of the XTurismo hoverbike. It works on the basis of an internal combustion engine and can stay in the air for up to 40 minutes.
The cost of the hoverbike is about 61 thousand dollars, and the first vehicles will be handed over to customers in the first half of 2022.
Over the past few years, dozens of companies have begun developing small vertical takeoff aircrafts designed to carry one or more people. Basically, these are air taxis, which will transport people in an unmanned mode within the city or not far from it.
But there are also individual multicopters for manual high-speed flight: these are either closed racing drones or open-body hoverbikes, on which the pilot sits like on a motorcycle.
There are still much fewer such projects than air taxis, and since a typical approach to their creation has not yet been worked out, almost always new vehicles of these classes bring original technical solutions.
A.L.I. Technologies has been developing the relatively large XTurismo hoverbike for several years and held its first public demonstration of its flight at the end of October. The hoverbike measures 3.7 meters long and 2.4 meters wide. It stands out from its counterparts with a hybrid design.
Previously, hoverbikes used either a scheme with two huge propellers in the center of the body, like the Aero-X or Colin Furse, or the classic quadrocopter scheme with four propellers in the corners.
The XTurismo designers have combined both approaches: it has two large props at the front and back of the case, and four small screws at the corners.
Probably, the large propellers are responsible for creating almost all the lift, while the lateral propellers help maneuver. During tests on the race track, the pilot lifted the hoverbike into the air and demonstrated basic maneuvers.
The XTurismo uses a combination of an internal combustion engine and batteries. They allow the vehicle to stay in the air for up to 40 minutes, which is quite a lot for this type of device.
The hoverbike can accelerate to 100 kilometers per hour and take off with a pilot or a load weighing up to 100 kilograms. It will go on sale in the first half of 2020 and will cost 77.7 million yen - about 61 thousand dollars.
Source: https://newatlas.com/aircraft/xturismo-limited-edition-hoverbike/