(ORDO NEWS) — The young company LEO Flight is preparing the first version of the LEO Coupe (LX-1) for flight tests.
The alpha prototype will receive at least 76 ducted fans with a diameter of 11 cm each. In the final version, the electric-powered aircraft will use more than 200 propellers.
LEO Flight (formerly Urban eVTOL) first announced itself about a year ago. The start-up was launched by a NASA specialist in electric propulsion for vertical take-off and landing aircraft and a well-known sports car designer.
The proposed design of an air taxi for two passengers and a driver on the outside resembles a sports car and can easily fit in a garage. Thanks for that need compact box fenders.
The main disadvantage of box wings is their relatively low lift. According to calculations, lift starts to keep the LEO Coupe with box wings at speeds over 185 km/h.
This means that the device must move and accelerate for a long time by propeller thrust, which also means increased battery consumption.
The way out of this situation will be to use many small fans instead of a dozen or two large propellers.
The company sees the advantage of many small motors in the low current load on each of them and on the electronics.
This will increase reliability and have a positive effect on the weight of the wiring, in particular, by reducing the cross section of the power cables.
The developers intend to prove this on an alpha prototype, which intends to begin testing in a manned mode in August of this year.
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