Struck 73 – Ehang Shows VT-30; Will EVTOLS Ever Have Swappable Batteries?

STRUCK: An Aerospace Engineering & Lightning Protection Show

The DigiProp program is aiming to bring complex composite propeller designs to life easier and faster - is it working? Plus, we talk about the COVID recovery and a recent report that $201 billion was lost due to the virus' impact on airlines. Lastly, Ehang showed off its new VT-30 EVTOL recently - where is Ehang going? And, AirBus and Honda are now off and running - will their designs fit a different niche than Joby, Volocopter and others? Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverters and aircraft lightning protection consulting services. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! TRANSCRIPT: Ehang Shows VT-30; Will EVTOLS Ever Have Swappable Batteries? this episode is brought to you by weatherguard lightning tech at weatherguard we support design engineers and make lightning protection easy you're listening to the struck podcast i'm Dan Blewett i'm Allen Hall and here on struck we talk about everything aviation aerospace engineering and lightning protection All right welcome back to the struck airspace engineering podcast i'm your co-host Dan blewett on today's show we'll talk a little bit about uh southwest and some other coveted vaccination rules that airlines are starting to enforce their employees and we'll talk a little bit about the recovery still kind of an update for the fall season here about uh covet and where the airlines are going we're going to talk a little bit about digiprop which is a program looking at the use of thermoplastics and braiding and some other interesting techniques for making propellers and we've got a bunch of evtol news we'll chat through today alakai and their sky hydrogen ev2l is looking for investment we'll talk about their design and some of the challenges there honda's also throwing their hat into the ring developing a hybrid electric evtol and we've also got some announcements from ehang on their vt30 some clarity on airbus as they explain explain their design behind the city airbus and lastly uh just some interesting um info about battery swaps and whether this might be something that could come to aviation or maybe it won't work we'll see um alan let's start with southwest so the latest airline to uh mandate their staff all 56 000 employees to get vaccinated by december 8th and of course this comes at the heel of a of a article by al jazeera that says the global airline industry has seen a 200 billion dollars 201 billion dollar uh loss due to cove at 19. so is this just the latest airline just trying to protect themselves as much as they can obviously hiring and the workforce is a very difficult it's a very difficult time to find employees and to keep everyone up and running i mean how do you view is this like the natural progression here that all these airlines are doing this well united did it a little while ago and now southwest is into the same position i think uh i think american and delta are in the same boat at the moment uh i think you have a really hard time with this we're already seeing the same sort of prescriptive uh you either have a vax vaccine or you or you're fired and we don't provide severance which is a nice little twist uh that is not working well in my area right now and new york state has had a big purge in a sense of where they're just firing all the health care workers that refuse vaccinations and that includes all staff it's not just nurses and doctors it's everybody that works around the hospital food service clean uh janitorial people it's a big deal uh and i'm not sure in in the sort of uh environmental today that it this is a good long-term solution for the airlines i know at the short term it raises some pr it makes people a little more comfortable to go fly i think but do i really care if the line mechanic has a vaccination or not or has previously had covet i i don't think i care as a part of the flying public it seems like more o...