E-volo Interview
Something big is underway in Europe in the field of aeronautics. A German company, E-VOLO, is designing a new type of helicopter. The AQTr had the opportunity to interview Mr. Stephan Wolf, CEO – Lead Software Development of E-VOLO.
1. Let’s talk about E-VOLO. Tell us about yourself and your area of specialization.
We are a start-up company founded by the four shareholders. We first started E-VOLO as a project with an extraordinary idea, but after the successful maiden flight of our proof-of-concept vehicle VC1 and the enormous world-wide media echo that followed, we were convinced that we could make a real product out of it.
2. What is the Volocopter?
The Volocopter is a manned aircraft that can take off, land, hover and fly like a helicopter. It uses multiple rotors driven by electric motors. By the way, the name Volocopter comes from “volo,” which means “flight” in Italian.
3. What was your inspiration the first time that you imagined the Volocopter?
Our inspiration came from a small model of multicopters that became very popular during the last couple of years. Interesting fact: the term “modelling” usually means building an actual existing machine in a reduced size. However, we did exactly the opposite because our Volocopter was built by up-scaling the technique used by small models.
4. How do your technologies operate?
Our basic technology is a set of electromechanical sensors that we use to determine the attitude and orientation of the aircraft, as well as its altitude. We can also determine the position using GPS. Our flight management system compares all of this information to the input of the pilot and calculates the thrust and thus rotation speed for each of the 18 rotors required to match the pilot’s actions.
The overall design of the Volocopter offers a lot of redundancy for all system components to avoid single-point-of-failure.
5. What was your initial target when creating E-VOLO?
We were simply fascinated by the absence of complex mechanics. In contrast to a helicopter that has a turbine, a gearbox, a swash-plate and alike, the only moving parts in the Volocopter are the ball-bearings in the brushless electric motors, much like an electric car compared to a standard car, and the Volocopter is also much more energy-efficient than a standard helicopter.
6. Tell us about the ecological aspects of the Volocopter.
Again, much like an electric car, all the Volocopter needs is electric power, which can be generated from renewable energy sources.
7. Do you think that your team found a “green solution” for aeronautics?
There are currently a lot of efforts in the aviation industry to use electric motors instead of standard turbines or piston engines; some examples are the E-Fan electric plane or the eCo2Avia electric helicopter concept studies by the Airbus Group (former EADS), for instance. So the overall trend towards electromobility also applies for aviation and our Volocopter impressively demonstrates the great potential of this technology.
8. How do you see the Volocopter in the future? Would it be used as a public transportation alternative?
Definitely. We get lots of requests from all over the world, but first and foremost from Brazil, where people think the Volocopter will be a great success, because even today the volume of helicopter flights is already huge in big cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
9. What are the economic benefits considered in your project?
Due to its very few and simple components, the Volocopter only requires very low maintenance. Indeed, the cost of the required electric power is by far less than 20 USD per hour. So the overall cost of operation is only a fraction of that compared to a helicopter.
10. How are you planning to commercialize the Volocopter? Do you think that the Volocopter has a future outside of Europe’s borders? Who are your potential customers or target markets?
For our two-seater VC200, we are currently working on a German license as an « ultralight » aircraft, which in accordance with European laws is the local (German) aviation class for aircrafts with a maximum take-off weight of 450 kg. This is our next milestone and only after having reached it will we start to think and talk about foreign markets.
We receive lots of sales requests from all over the world, but most of them come from the USA, Canada and Brazil. But we will continue to go our way step by step.
Potential customers in the German market are flight schools, owner groups, which are very common in aviation, and individuals.
