Shanghai’s TCab Tech has become one of China’s leading eVTOL contenders, claiming it’s now made many test flights validating its 50-percent scale prototype E20 air taxi design in vertical lift and hover mode, as well as transitions to winged cruise flight.
The E20 is an interesting take on a five-seat electric VTOL aircraft, a kind of halfway measure between tilt-prop vectored thrust designs like the Joby S4 and lift and cruise designs like Autoflight’s Prosperity. A large pair of gull wings rise off the top of the cabin, and halfway along them are a pair of four-blade lift props, capable of splitting and aligning themselves longitudinally for minimal drag in forward flight.
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Further out on the main wings sit a pair of large five-blade tilting props, and the remainder of the wing tips are fixed to the propulsion nacelles such that they tilt along with them. Back toward the tail is a second, shorter, forward-angled wing, which terminates in another set of tilting nacelles with large five-bladed props on them.
Read more: New Atlas
