Yesterday, February 17, the American company Joby Aviation published an official document, which reports the crash of an early prototype of an all-electric Joby S4 air taxi. The company’s representatives said the newest vehicle, which boasts vertical takeoff and landing and five seats for passengers and a pilot, crashed during another test phase. Fortunately, the electric aircraft was controlled remotely from a ground base, so no one was injured as a result of the crash – the flight took place in a deserted area.
@jobyaviation Team was pushing the boundaries of the #eVTOL yesterday.
According to Specs JOBY S4 Top speed is 200 miles / hour.
Yesterday, They were consistently pushing the boundaries – many times it crossed 230 kt and hitting 240kt (265 – 270 miles / hour )
N542AJ pic.twitter.com/gET8aKGVRZ
— Joby-Aviation-Fan (@JobyInvestor) February 17, 2022
So far, representatives of the American company do not plan to publish a detailed analysis of the situation – the incident will be investigated first, and only then will Joby Aviation publish a detailed report. On the other hand, company representatives reported that the crash occurred at a very impressive speed – the Joby S4 vehicle was dispersed to 435 km / h. It is worth noting that this speed is more than 100 km / h higher than the maximum declared speed of movement on an electric air taxi. Accordingly, it is quite possible that the control or power systems simply could not withstand such an impressive load.
Initially, the developers said that the Joby S4 is the fastest representative in its class – the electric vehicle was announced with a cruising speed of 322 km / h, but rather quickly the prototype was dispersed to 330 km / h. After that, representatives of Joby Aviation stated that in order to obtain the appropriate certificate for an aircraft in this design, it is necessary to provide the state regulator with information about the tests, during which the maximum declared speed must be successfully exceeded by 30%.
Most likely, the developers of the American brand were engaged in just these tests – but, unfortunately, the language does not turn to call the flight successful. On the other hand, Joby Aviation said that the first pre-production prototype of an air taxi crashed, which had previously made several thousand flights without a single complaint. Now engineers have to find out what caused the accident at such a high speed, and fix the problem before sending the aircraft to a full release.
Source: Trash Box
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