In all forms of motorsport, crashes are inevitable. Accidents are a simple fact of competitive racing.
While everyone is familiar with accidents on four or two wheels, the groundbreaking Airspeeder series may be new to many.
However, the end goal remains the same. Learn from these accidents to make vehicles safer and advance technology so that one day we can see flying cars as a viable and safe form of transportation.
“There’s a reason we first put a rocket on the moon, and we launched it without people,” said Airspeeder CEO Matt Pearson. “We need to try a lot of things, try multiple stages of the mission, authenticate the vehicle in a safe way before sending people into uncharted territory.
“Every time we crash, we learn. Being comfortable with crashes allows you to innovate faster.”
The first “failure” was very public and took place at the world-famous Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2019. The Mk 2 eVTOL Alauda crashed into a field and while no one was injured it was a sobering and somewhat embarrassing moment.
Still, as the famous saying goes, if you fall off a horse, the only thing you need to do to correct the mistake is to jump straight back. From its early days, the groundbreaking Airspeeder series saw the first two remote-controlled races, both won by surfer-turned-drone pilot Zephatali Walsh.
And, like any form of motorsport, it’s not without accidents. There was another crash, this time when FPV and drone specialist Lexie Janson dropped the eVTOL Alauda Mk3 during qualifying, only to bounce back and take the podium behind Walsh.
There will be more successes, and there will be more failures. As Pearson rightly points out, the history of motorsports is littered with accidents, many of them tragic. The earliest cars were not taxis, but racing cars. Cutting-edge technology provides a proving ground for the cars people drive on the road.
That’s the ultimate goal of the Airspeeder, the embryonic stage of testing technology that could one day, perhaps in the next few decades, become a method of safe transportation.
“What we learn from crashes in the short term can improve vehicles and keep people safe,” Pearson added. “In the long run, these improvements collectively propel us toward the future of motorsports and mobility.
“Every time we crash, we learn. And we never crash twice in the same way. Every time we crash, we want to extract the maximum learning, a lot of data, restore it as quickly as possible and make it usable.”
“We want to make vehicles that anyone can own and anyone can fly. So what we learn from racing and crashing will make these vehicles the safest vehicles in the sky.”
Turning science fiction into science fact may be closer than we thought.
The Greatest Tech Industry Collaboration
Alauda Aeronautics’ technical leadership team draws from the greatest minds in the technology, automotive and aerospace industries, including IWC Schaffhausen, Ferrari, McLaren, Jaguar Land Rover, Rolls-Royce, Boeing and Airbus. It is the world’s first mass-produced high-performance electric flying car.
Alauda and the Airspeeder team were also able to leverage Acronis and Teknov8’s expertise in securing and managing vital telemetry and race data, with the ultimate goal of creating a digital architecture that will drive 5G-enabled infrastructure to ensure safe management in autonomous and urban environments Driving an eVTOL vehicle.
Partner with ACRONIS
Acronis is proud to be an Official Cyber Protection Partner air speed boat. To learn more, visit https://www.acronis.com/en-us/lp/msp-sports/
