Horseless carriages. Putting a man on the moon. A portable phone.
These concepts once seemed like nothing more than science fiction. But they became real, historic achievements in innovation.
LIFT Aircraft is working on what could become the next great real-world concept: a flying car.
This company has developed an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or “eVTOL” for short. It’s a type of electric helicopter that is cheaper, quieter, and more mobile than traditional choppers. In other words, it's a type of flying car.
Boeing has already created an eVTOL aircraft. So has Airbus, Uber, and Rolls Royce. Other companies working on flying cars include Google, Toyota, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, and Hyundai.
Their focus explains why Urban Air Mobility is set to become one of the largest industries in the world. According to a Morgan Stanley report, this market will reach one trillion dollars by 2040, and nine trillion dollars by 2050.
The thing is, the companies above are already worth hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars. Their profit potential isn’t as great as investing in an early-stage startup targeting this market, a startup like LIFT Aircraft.
LIFT’s aircraft is a single-seat vehicle called “HEXA.” It’s essentially a big drone with a seat in it. Modular in design, its cabin and landing gear can be swapped out with various payloads, enabling a variety of manned and unmanned applications — everything from recreational flying to emergency response scenarios.
HEXA can reach speeds of up to ninety miles per hour and fly up to fifteen miles in ten minutes. It was built specifically for short-range flights. (This is important, as eighty-five percent of car trips are less than fifteen miles.)
Notably, LIFT designed HEXA with the average traveler in mind. For instance, the aircraft comes with numerous safety features, including a redundant autopilot system, floats in the event of a water landing, and a whole-aircraft ballistic parachute that deploys autonomously.
Additionally, flying HEXA doesn’t require extensive training, or even a pilot’s license. New pilots can be airborne after less than an hour of instruction.
LIFT completed an initial design of HEXA in 2017. It then created a prototype a year later, and conducted its first test flight a year after that. In December 2019, LIFT became the first U.S. company to start production on an eVTOL aircraft, partnering with Qarbon Aerospace, an aerospace supplier that manufactures components for Boeing aircraft.
More recently, LIFT won an R&D contract with the U.S. Air Force to use HEXA in emergency medical situations and a flight test contract with the Air Force Research Lab.
To date, the company has conducted more than 700 test flights and production of its aircraft is underway. It’s received more than ten million dollars in funding, including from venture capital firms Capital Factor, Point Nine Capital, ATX Venture Partners, and Decisive Point.
To introduce its flying car to the masses, LIFT is building America’s first eVTOL “vertiport” — essentially an airport designed specifically for its HEXA aircraft.
At its vertiports, anyone will be able to book introductory fifteen-minute flights on a HEXA aircraft. The company will charge around $250 per flight, and projects to generate more than one million dollars in annual revenue from each aircraft produced.