Electric eVTOL technology demonstrator completes flight test
Sarla Aviation has completed the flight-test campaign for Sylla, its half-scale electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) technology demonstrator. It said that during the six
Sarla Aviation has completed the flight-test campaign for Sylla, its half-scale electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) technology demonstrator. It said that during the six months of field testing, Sylla logged more than 500 tests and over 18 hours of flight testing, making the 700 kg-class, 7.5-metre-wingspan aircraft the heaviest electric aircraft ever to take off in India. Sylla 1.0 is a half-scale technology demonstrator built to validate aircraft-level and system-level integration under real operating conditions.
The company successfully evaluated the interaction between the aircraft’s electric propulsion system, battery architecture, distributed propulsion, flight-control algorithms, airframe, and landing gear as a fully integrated aircraft. It said that, with the successful completion of its integrated flight test campaign, Sylla 1.0 has achieved the engineering objectives for which it was designed. Next chapter As the monsoon season arrives over South India, the programme now transitions to its next chapter. It said that having captured the complete set of flight data required, Sarla Aviation will incorporate these learnings into its next-generation technology demonstrator designed to achieve a controlled transition from hover to sustained wing-borne flight.
“The successful completion of the Sylla 1.0 campaign marks the beginning of Sarla Aviation’s next phase of flight testing. The company has already begun the development of Sylla 2.0, an upgraded technology demonstrator that incorporates the engineering learnings from the current programme. While Sylla 1.0 focused on validating integrated aircraft systems and controlled hover, Sylla 2.0 will pursue controlled transition between vertical and wing-borne flight, the defining technological milestone required before developing a certifiable passenger eVTOL,” the company said.
Rakesh Gaonkar, co-founder and CTO at Sarla Aviation, said, “Sylla has given us the data we set out to capture, and those learnings are already shaping our next-gen aircraft as we move towards transition and sustained wing-borne flight on our journey to our 6+1 air taxi ‘Shunya’.”
The BriefWire