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In 2017, the mysterious flying car company Kitty Hawk seemed to be winning. The company is funded by Google co-founder Larry Page [span class = “text-remarks” label = “note”> (Larry Page) and is funded by Stanford University ’s artificial intelligence and robotics wizard Sebasti Ann Tron (Sebastian Thrun) operation, which has promoted Google’s self-driving car division.
Kitty Hawk has just demonstrated the prototype of the Flyer, a single-seat battery-powered aircraft designed to be a low-altitude amusement machine for use on water, like a jet ski with a rotor, to control Convenient to make flying as easy as driving. Page said at the time: “I’m excited, and one day I will soon be able to board my Kitty Hawk Flyer for a fast and easy private flight.” The startup promised to deliver orders to eagerness by the end of the year. Buyers hands.
At the end of that year, the Mountain View, California-based company also began a more ambitious flight test project in New Zealand: A two-seater electric self-driving taxi called Cora. Kitty Hawk claims that this “flying” will allow city residents to soar freely on congested streets. A few months after Cora was unveiled, Thrun told The Guardian: “Imagine that you can drive straight at 80 miles per hour at any time of the day without having to stop. This is almost true It’s a transformation for everyone I know. “
But according to four former Kitty Hawk employees, two years later, Kitty Hawk ’s vision of “everyone owns a personal aircraft” is frustrated by the technical and safety problems of the aircraft and other unsolved practical problems. . Meanwhile, sources said the company may have given up control of Cora.
Kitty Hawk confirmed to Forbes that after releasing an upgraded version of Flyer last year, the company has decided not to sell the single-seat aircraft to individuals and has refunded deposits to potential buyers. According to two former engineers, there are problems with Flyer, among which equipment, including batteries, electric motors, and electrical wiring, often fail and fire. Last year, the Mountain View fire brigade was notified to put out the fire at the Flyer Building in the early morning. Former Google employees said the fire at a building owned by Google involved damaged batteries that had been removed from a plane that crashed during a remotely operated flight test the day before.
Kitty Hawk consultant Shernaz Daver wrote in an email in response to a series of questions from Forbes that no one was out of danger because of more than 26,000 test flights with more than 100 prototype aircraft And get hurt. She did not directly comment on fires, fault reports or battery issues.
Two former employees said that in order to bring Flyer to the market as soon as possible, management has repeatedly rejected the requests of some employees because they worry that problems with the aircraft may endanger passengers. They said, rightAfter the aircraft’s safety was questioned, at least two members of the flight test team were fired, while other members of the Flyer team who questioned also withdrew or joined another Kitty Hawk project. When Forbes reporters contacted these people, they declined to comment.
A former employee said: “This has formed a pattern. Once you talk about security, you’re done, so you can’t do it. If you don’t want to be fired, you have to do it.” Daver did not respond directly to the issue of employee departure, but he said that employees at Kitty Hawk need to report security issues to the manager, or report directly to the general counsel and manpower through a confidential digital channel, and can be anonymous with the external security officer Discuss security issues.
Kitty Hawk started early, and now many startups are also trying to build urban electric flying. Larry Page has a wealth of nearly 60 billion US dollars, which is a huge advantage, allowing the company to hire hundreds of people. Engineers, mechanics and designers create advanced aircraft. However, the company faces pain points in any promising area: the current energy density difference of the battery severely limits the flight time and carrying capacity of the electric aircraft. Although the prototype is simple to build, the launch of the product is not easy, and the latter needs to be met. Aviation regulatory agency safety requirements. However, many requirements for urban air traffic do not yet exist.
These challenges may explain why the strategic partnership with Boeing announced in June may be much deeper than the public announcement. According to former employees, changes in Kitty Hawk’s public filings and organizational structure indicate that control of the Cora project has changed and Boeing appears to be a potential acquirer. The aircraft maker and Kitty Hawk declined to comment.
This will leave Kitty Hawk with two other aircraft: Flyer and Heaviside, an automatic single-seat wing aircraft, which debuted in October last year. The original intention was to solve the problem of making helicopter airports noiseless. 100 times quieter and faster. The company has shelved the idea of marketing the Flyer aircraft as an entertainment device and is exploring commercial options, perhaps operating it as an air ferry.
Daver said: “We have seen it as a transportation service, not a means of transportation purchased by individuals. This will be a ride-sharing model of transportation services.”
In 2010, Larry Page got involved in the aviation industry and quietly invested in a company called Zee.Aero’s company, directed by Stanford University professor of aerospace Ilan Kroo near the Google campus. The project’s original vision was to develop a flying car in the literal sense, so its foldable wings could fit into a home garage, but soon they gave up this unrealistic idea. Zee continues to experiment with other designs, one of which combines new elements with the old configuration and is registered with the FAA under the name Mutt. The company also tested a piloted electric aircraft that the company is considering selling as a kit for buyers to assemble. In the end Zee decided to develop the aircraft into an unmanned aerial taxi, which is now Cora.
In 2015, in a small coastal village outside Banks, North Carolina, after the Wright brothers conducted their own flight test, Page set up another startup, Kitty Hawk, in Zee.Aero next door in 2015. Kitty Hawk is now run by Thrun, who previously directed Google’s moon landing research and development project and founded online education company Udacity. Kitty Hawk modified a series of concepts, including a complex solution: the pod was suspended from the aircraft by a rope, so that the pod could catch people or cargo on the ground while the aircraft was hovering above.
In the end, Kitty Hawk included Zee.Aero in his Majesty, hoping to be the first electric passenger aircraft that can take off and land vertically. According to some former employees, Thrun wants this small team to work quickly and creatively, using as many off-the-shelf components as possible. “We are fans of Kitty Hawk and we are doing crazy things,” an employee added.
Kitty Hawk’s Flyer is a small enough to completely avoid safety certifications and weighs 254 pounds so that it can qualify as an ultralight aircraft under Federal Aviation Administration regulations. This type of aircraft has long been amateur Realm of lovers and inventors. The operation of ultralight aircraft is restricted. They cannot fly in densely populated areas or at night, but it is the manufacturer ’s responsibility to ensure the safety of the aircraft.
Flyer has made rapid progress with an engineering team of less than 20 people. In 2017, Kitty Hawk showed the New York Times a motorcycle that looked like it was on a cobweb with eight downward facing rotors.
In 2018, the company started a small media test drive on Lake Las Vegas. The test drive was a more complete car with a composite frame and 10 upward-facing rotors around it. . The flight was limited to a height of 10 feet and a speed of 20 miles per hour. It was originally intended to fly on water. For safety reasons, the company described it as an adventure. YouTube celebrity Casey Neistat tried it out and posted a video in which he yelled happily while spinning around the lake. The video was viewed 2.2 million times.
But Flyer is not ready for exciting preparations. According to three former employees, the latest prototypes often fail and require engineers to regularly troubleshoot and repair. “This machine breaks down every few hours and needs maintenance.” In response, Kitty Hawk did not answer questions about flight reliability.
The series of fires that occurred during the research and development process are only part of the problem. Two former employees said that in order to reduce weight, engineers eliminated the protective screens commonly used between car lithium-ion batteries and tied the batteries together with tape, increasing the risk that other batteries could catch fire when the battery caught fire. A former employee said that until recently, the Flyer project had its own battery expert.
Some former employees said that the Flyer project has undergone a reset in the past six months. The focus is on improving reliability, not redesigning, and finding application scenarios for these vehicles.
“Kitty Hawk violated our original intention of building economically viable products from the beginning. It designed something to solve the problem, that is, we made a cool thing, but what can we do with it?” A former employee said he was one of the employees leaving the Flyer project this year.
The latest idea is: Kitty Hawk operates Flyer as a service. Two former employees of the company said that the company has found cities that can provide end-to-end water cycling services in these cities, so that in the event of an accident, there is an easier landing surface. They say passengers will no longer have the freedom to fly airplanes and flight routes will be automated. According to local media reports, Kitty Hawk has applied for a permit to build a floating dock and hangar in Jersey City, New Jersey to build a route that may cross the Hudson River to Manhattan, while the company is currently exploring a route across the San Francisco Bay. route.
It is unclear how Flyer will regulate in this case. One of the grey areas is: It will be considered a watercraft or a low-flying aircraft.
A US Coast Guard spokesman said Kitty Hawk had contacted the US Coast Guard and asked how they would classify the Flyer. “We are carefully considering the classification of these vehicles and the decision will be made atPriority will be given to their place in the marine transport system in the coming years or decades. “
Cora, another of the company’s major projects, also faces daunting regulatory hurdles.
In June this year, Boeing and Kitty Hawk announced a strategic partnership. They said they would combine the innovations of Kitty Hawk ’s Cora division with Boeing ’s size and aerospace expertise. But the company’s public records and changes show that the situation is much more than that.
In May of this year, Molly Abraham, General Counsel for Kitty Hawk, submitted a document in Delaware requesting the establishment of a company named Cora Aero at the same address as Kitty Hawk; in a document last November, Cora Aero CEO Gary Gysin has been the head of Liquid Robotics until he stepped down in February this year. Liquid Robotics, a company that develops Boeing’s self-piloting seaplanes, was acquired by Boeing in 2016. In a statement on Monday, Boeing and Kitty Hawk confirmed that Gysin is the CEO of the new joint venture.
A former Kitty Hawk employee said that when Boeing announced the cooperation, the access to the Cora building was (including all shared cafeterias and reception areas) Suddenly restricted the entry of the employees of this project, and IT, human resources and other office workers were divided into Cora and Kitty Hawk. Some people say they believe that Boeing now controls Cora.
Cora faces tough challenges in New Zealand. James Lawson, an aviation safety consultant, said that because of the attractive features of New Zealand’s aviation safety regulations, Kitty Hawk chose to fight for safety certification there, which promised to allow the company to work with the New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority to define airworthiness standards. In addition, a unique provision allows “adventure flights” for aircraft without standard safety certifications, such as older military rockets, which may allow Kitty Hawk to launch a profitable passenger service before Cora is fully certified. James Lawson discussed Kita Hawk with Cora when the company was considering certification in the United States.
A former employee of the Cora project said that Cora is handmadeIf the internal custom components are still in the stage of verifying their technology. Another version says that Cora needs to consider safety systems, weather protection and passenger comfort, and that it can be produced. Lawson said that these last, long and arduous steps will be a big obstacle for many urban air travel startups as they try to transform from “skunk factory” inventors to real businesses, and these obstacles will be spent A lot of corporate budget.
“Technology is the same thing, but 80% of the effort is in the production and manufacture of a certified aircraft.”
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