From Australia comes Airspeeder by startup Alauda Racing, a four-meter long and three-and-a-half-meter wide flying electric racing vehicle with four or eight electric motors that travel 200 km. It takes off and lands vertically, is made of carbon fiber, and weighs 120 kg without a pilot or 250 kg maximum with a pilot.
Airspeeder is the future of motorsports. The closed single-seat cockpit craft is the shining star of the world’s first flying car championship – head-to-head challenges at the height of twenty meters above the ground. Its battery only allows for flights of around ten minutes, so pilots will have to switch speeders at regular pit stops. The two confirmed first venues are the desert near Coober Pedy in South Australia and the Mojave Desert in California.
The feat of having several vehicles flying all at the same time together won’t be dangerous because Alauda is developing “high-speed collision avoidance” technology to ensure the pilots’ safety. The technology includes airborne lidar, radar, and machine vision.
Matt Pearson, Airspeeder’s founder, and CEO said in an interview with GQ:
Getting multiple vehicles in the air at the same time is tricky. Even with autonomous vehicles on the ground, it isn’t easy to get right because computers have to make decisions quickly. But in a racing environment, you have a pretty controlled course, and you can make all the vehicles cooperate. You have a whole load of vehicles talking to each other, so if there’s an incident or a pilot slows down, or there’s a traffic jam on the course, they’re all aware of each other. This is something we think will revolutionize autonomous vehicles on the ground. It’s a technology that will make flying cars a reality in our cities in the future.
And if you think that the image of a flying car championship is reminiscent of the pod racing in Star Wars, then you’ve struck the hammer right on the nail because that’s precisely what the company is going for.
Pearson said that movie and many others inspired him. He said:
We all saw that movie and fell in love with that idea. Everyone sees the similarities in what we’re doing. It’s exciting bringing that to life. [Other inspirational sci-fi movies include] Blade Runner, Back To The Future, The Fifth Element, and of course, Luke Skywalker jumping into his landspeeder in the first Star Wars movie. All these are definitely influencing. This is why the world is so ready for what we’re doing. We’ve been building up to [flying cars] for a long time in our culture.
This year, to further secure the Airspeeder electric flying car racing series, Alauda has teamed up with Acronis, a leading cyber protection firm. Acronis will provide technical and commercial support for the racing series. The partnership is a landmark technical and strategic move because Acronis is known for harnessing the power of data to propel performance in elite competitions.
Pearson said in a press release:
At Airspeeder, we are creating aerial motorsport driven by innovation. Backing from Acronis, a business with an extraordinary culture of technological success in Formula One and Formula E represents a significant affirmation of our vision to accelerate the next great mobility revolution through sporting competition.
The first races are expected to take place next year. Global commentators are describing Airspeeder as the ‘Formula One of the skies.’ Its only fitting for Acronis to manage the streams of live data from the futures most exciting global sport on the planet. The company will also be creating virtual force-fields around each racing craft (Speeder) that ensure close but safe racing.
The whole eVTOL sector will benefit from the launch of this close sporting competition because it will accelerate technology development. The industry is already backed by giants, including Airbus, Daimler, Hyundai, Toyota, and Uber. Flying electric cars are considered the next major mobility revolution, promising to liberate cities of congested streets while cutting journey times and carbon emissions. Morgan Stanley has predicted that the sector will be worth $1.5 trillion by 2040. Even the US Air Force is testing eVTOLs to add to the military’s flying arsenal.
Jan-Jaap Jager, the Senior Vice President and Board Advisor at Acronis, said:
Acronis’ place at the leading edge of innovation in data management perfectly aligns with Alauda and Airspeeder’s vision to accelerate a mobility revolution through close sporting competition. Our proven, integrated approach to providing easy, efficient, reliable, and secure cyber protection for all data, applications, and systems, will help Airspeeder to enhance their performance on the air track and in the back office. We look forward to delivering on the promise of a true next-generation technical and sporting proposition.
Like how the pioneers of Formula One drove technical developments and built public acceptance for a new mobility revolution nearly a century ago, Airspeeder will push progress into the sky. The company is grounded in the philosophy that nothing accelerates technical progress like an exhilarating sporting competition!
