Drone airport at sea: AutoFlight unveils first eVTOL air taxi water landing platform

AutoFlight, a maker of commercial electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft backed by battery maker CATL, has introduced the first "sea-air mobility solution," basically a floating airport for landing eVTOL that can be deployed anywhere at sea.

The eVTOL take-off platform is fully autonomous and can charge the aircraft via its solar panel and energy storage system. AutoFlight makes electric aircraft for passenger, cargo, rescue, firefighting, air taxi, or other commercial operations that don't involve the luxury of a long runway to take off or land.

With the new eVTOL Water Vertiport, the company intends to offer a full air, land, and sea coverage for applications like air taxis in big cities, emergency response, ocean oil rig maintenance or simply flying for fun and visiting tourist destinations.

Besides the landing platform and charging infrastructure, the Vertiport platform sports a dispatch center and communications and can be quickly deployed in various waterways like lakes, rivers, or the sea. Several eVTOL sea mobility solutions can also be deployed to form a "high-throughput, distributed Vertiport cluster, supporting large-scale, multi-mission coordinated operations for broader coverage and smarter applications," tips AutoFlight, or a so-called Sea-Air Super Hub.

The company, where CATL invested hundreds of millions of dollars and is developing electric aircraft batteries for, already has orders for more than 2,000 units. It says that the water landing platform will cut emergency response time by 50% or make maintaining offshore wind farms and oil rigs ten times faster. For the air taxi business, it can take shortcuts to airports or city center locations, unloading busy transport infrastructure.

The nascent eVTOL business is really taking off, pun not intended, and CATL wants a big piece of the pie to augment its electric car battery orders. It is also working on condensed batteries for electric planes with 2000-mile range, as well as standardized swap stations and other charging infrastructure that will expand its market share.

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