Your First Air Taxi Ride Might Be in a Batplane

Pipistrel, a Slovenian aircraft manufacturer, has chosen Honeywell‘s Compact Fly-By-Wire system for its Nuuva V300 cargo unmanned aerial vehicle.  Honeywell’s decades of experience with airliners went into the new compact system, which is about the size of a paperback book.  In addition, Honeywell can provide a full line of avionics, flight control, navigation, and more. Just take a look at Honeywell’s patent application publications on Magic Number® Patent Forecast® for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Management. 

Pipistrel is not a recent startup, either. Pipistrel has been producing light aircraft since the mid-1980s, with over 2,200 produced to-date. And in 2011, Pipistrel’s Taurus G4 won the CAFE Foundation’s Green Flight Challenge, covering 403.5 passenger miles per gallon gasoline equivalent with two people on board, and receiving the $1.35 million prize donated by NASA. 

The cargo UAV is also a stepping stone to the passenger-carrying Pipistrel 801, which is its proposed air taxi for Uber Elevate. Honeywell’s expertise and the proven capabilities of its Compact Fly-By-Wire system will provide airliner levels of safety. In an industry where accidents are show-stoppers, finding the best partner is essential to long-term survival. 

But what’s up with the name? Well, when founder Ivo Boscariol started producing planes in the ’80s, Slovenia was still part of Yugoslavia and light aircraft were banned, so he started test-flying planes between dusk and dark.  The locals would call them “bats” and the name was adopted, using the Italian version (pipistrello).  

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