Motorsport serves as a pivotal testbed for innovative technology that may eventually find its way into the mass market. Many of today’s leading passenger vehicle brands can trace their roots to the racetrack. Henry Ford started out by building race cars: in 1901 he famously beat renowned driver Alexander Winton in a ten-mile race at Grosse Pointe, Michigan to secure investors for his fledgling car company. Seven years later, he launched the Model T and by 1920 the US had 7.5 million cars on the road.
Renault co-founder Marcel Renault and Rolls-Royce co-founder Charles Rolls were also both racing drivers. The first Fiats were racing cars, as were the first Mercedes models. Could racing now play a similar role for the nascent electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) industry?
Airspeeder
Airspeeder is an electric flying vehicle racing series using eVTOL models from Alauda Aeronautics. Both companies were founded and are overseen today by entrepreneur and visionary Matt Pearson. At the moment, all the eVTOLs in the racing series come from Alauda Aeronautics and are remotely piloted. In 2022, Airspeeder staged two demonstration races, both un-crewed, with five-metre-long drones in close proximity. Very soon they will be manned.
“Like Enzo Ferrari said, we started by competing against ourselves and we ended by beating all of our rivals,” Pearson tells Automotive World. “We’re doing it all: building the vehicles, setting up the race infrastructure, and writing the rules.” Other teams are expected to come aboard soon, though no details can be confirmed at the time of writing. “It’s exciting to see some of the biggest mobility companies in the world thinking about this,” he teases.
