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DUBAI — Four years after announcing its entry into the electric vertical take-off and landing market, Honda is at the Dubai Airshow with the first public update on its progress.
Honda R&D is exhibiting a subscale model of its eVTOL, a turbogenerator and a notional cabin mock-up in Dubai in a bid to demonstrate to suppliers and the industry at large that it is committed to commercialization. At the same time, its executives are practical about the challenges associated with developing new technology and do not expect Federal Aviation Administration type certification before the early 2030s — potentially with a very different configuration than the aircraft on display.
“We have a long experience from HondaJet around the testing campaign for a type certificate, and we know that it’s very hard,” Atsushi Ogawa, director of Honda R&D Innovative Research Excellence, told The Air Current in an interview at the show. Executive chief engineer Susumu Mashio added: “If we’re too optimistic, no supplier believes us.”
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