# Two\-Seat eVTOL Flight & Systems

How a two\-seat electric air taxi lifts off vertically, tilts its rotors forward to fly on its wings, and lands again\.

By vivid\-wombat\-e2f476da

Topic: Machines

[Open the interactive Jig](https://ask.jig.com/j/qQMs79jMaJRD)

## Transcript

### 1. Meet a two\-seat air taxi

This little aircraft is an eVTOL: an electric vertical take\-off and landing aircraft\. It rises straight up like a helicopter, then flies forward like a plane\. Four rotors sit on short wings around a body shaped like a standing water droplet\.

Drag empty space to turn the view\. Pinch or scroll to zoom\.

### 2. Climbing aboard

Passengers board only while the rotors are stopped\. Two gull\-wing doors, hinged at the top, swing up out of the way so you can step straight in\. The two seats sit side by side behind a wide wraparound window\.

Real two\-seaters such as the EHang 216 also use doors hinged at the top\.

### 3. Power from the floor

Under the cabin floor sit the battery packs: think of a giant phone battery split into four boxes\. Power cables carry electricity out along the wings to four electric motors, one inside each rotor pod\. Separate packs mean one fault cannot cut all the power\.

A kilogram of jet fuel holds about fifty times more energy than a kilogram of today's best aircraft batteries, so trips stay short\.

### 4. The brain: fly\-by\-wire

The control stick is not linked to the rotors by rods or cables\. It sends signals to flight computers, which decide how fast each motor should spin, many times every second\. Sensors, such as gyroscopes, GPS and the air\-data probe on the nose, tell the computers how the aircraft is moving\.

This design carries three flight computers that check each other, so one faulty computer can be outvoted\.

### 5. Straight up

All four rotors point up and spin faster until their push, called thrust, is bigger than the aircraft's weight\. To lean, turn or hold steady, the computers speed some rotors up and slow others down\. Hovering is the hardest work an eVTOL does: it uses far more power than cruising\.

### 6. The big tilt

Now the clever part\. Electric actuators at each wingtip slowly swing the rotor pods forward\. As speed builds, air flowing over the wings starts to hold the aircraft up, so the rotors can turn into propellers that pull it along\.

This changeover from hovering to flying on the wings is called transition\.

### 7. Cruising on wings

With the rotors facing forward, the wings carry the weight and the rotors only push against the air\. That takes much less power than hovering, so the battery lasts longer\. Air taxis like this are built for short hops across a city, not long journeys\.

The two\-seat EHang 216 cruises at about 100 km/h for around 30 kilometres\.

### 8. Landing and stepping out

To land, the pods tilt back up and the rotors take the weight from the wings again\. The aircraft slows to a hover and sinks gently onto its skids\. Only when the motors have stopped do the doors swing open for the passengers\.

Every flight keeps some battery in reserve, in case the aircraft needs to go somewhere else\.