Airbus has announced plans for the new CityAirbus at its summit on ‘Pioneering Sustainable Aerospace’. The next generation of CityAirbus is a fully electric vehicle equipped with fixed wings, a V-shaped tail and eight electrically powered propellers as part of its distributed propulsion system. It is designed to carry up to four passengers in a zero emissions flight.

It is being developed to fly with a 80 km range and to reach a cruising speed of 120 km/h. With sound levels below 65 dB(A) during fly-over and below 70 dB(A) during landing. It is being optimised for hover and cruise efficiency, while not requiring moving surfaces or tilting parts during transition. It meets the highest certification standards for EASA SC-VTOL enhanced category.

The Vahana and CityAirbus demonstrators have jointly conducted 242 flight and ground tests and have flown around 1,000km in total. Airbus has used subscale flight testing and wind tunnel campaigns and leveraged its computing and modelling power. The CityAirbus is in a detailed design phase and the prototype's first flight is planned for 2023.

“We have learned a lot from the test campaigns with our two demonstrators, CityAirbus and Vahana,” says Bruno Even, Airbus Helicopters CEO. “The CityAirbus NextGen combines the best from both worlds with the new architecture striking the right balance between hover and forward flight. The prototype is paving the way for certification expected around 2025.”