Shanghai manufacturer to test its air taxis at the Paris Olympics

Shanghai-based AutoFlight, a developer of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles, will test its 250-kilometre range aircraft during the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The experimental manned flights will be conducted at Pontoise, a test centre that opened last November. Located northwest of the French capital, Pontoise is the first of five so-called vertiports operated by Groupe ADP in the Paris region, China Daily reports.

The Prosperity I is a fixed-wing aircraft with a world record range of 250 km and energy consumption comparable to an electric car. The aircraft set the record for the longest flight on a single eVTOL charge in February, covering 250.3 km. The previous record of 247.9 km was set in 2021 by the American company Joby Aviation.

"The 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris will be a global celebration and we are proud to have AutoFlight's technology as part of that," said Mark Henning, Managing Director of AutoFlight Europe.

AutoFlight is one of the few eVTOL developers to have managed the challenging phase of transitioning from vertical to horizontal flight. Its Prosperity aircraft uses rotors to lift the aircraft vertically for take-off before using wings to achieve horizontal flight.

At the end of 2021, AutoFlight built its first proof-of-concept aircraft and flew in Shanghai.