CES: Helix eVTOL Flying Craft Takes Off for $190,000

• CES has all kinds of whacky things, like this little flying transport Helix helicopter, with eight rotors, an 8-kWh battery, and a range of 20 miles.

• "It is elegant, it is simple," said CEO Ken Karklin at CES. "It lacks the complexity that just about any other eVTOL has."
  

• Starting price is $190,000, with first deliveries June 10.

How many flying car/flying whatever companies have we seen come and go over the many years since Paul Moller first showed the Skycar on the cover of magazines everywhere? Plenty.

Nonetheless, if CES is as much about dreaming what’s possible in the future, wouldn’t it be cool to have your own single-seater heli-looking carbon-fiber-composite flight bottle?

The little bean-shaped Helix features two banks of four electric rotors front and rear, eight rotors total. Neither the wings nor the rotors tilt, thus saving a lot of complexity. Helix calls the propeller array “a tilt aircraft with fixed rotors and tandem wings.” So the rotor banks are fixed, even in forward flight. It's not like, say, the much more expensive V-22 Osprey that the Marine Corps flies. This idea is to be simple and safe.

"It is elegant, it is simple," said CEO Ken Karklin at CES. "It lacks the complexity that just about any other eVTOL has."

An eVTOL is an electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing craft, like a helicopter or that V22 Osprey. This is one of those, not on steroids, but instead from the other direction, a craft reduced to its simplest, most efficient form.

"There are no rotating wings; there are no rotating motors," Karklin continues. "We have 12 control surfaces: the RPM value of eight motors and the position of four ailerons. That's it. There are some other eVTOLs where I stopped counting at 40 control surfaces."

You don't need 40 control surfaces, at least not for a simple, one-seater craft like this.