Jetson encourages world’s first eVTOL races with a pilot onboard [Video]

Single-seat eVTOL developer Jetson has once again become the first in its segment to do something. Well, sort of. The company recently shared footage of its founder and CTO piloting its flagship Jetson ONE eVTOL around 26-foot tall pylons to demonstrate the agility the aircraft can perform to enable full-fledged eVTOL races. Could we be seeing the early days of a new venture in motorsports?

Jetson AB is a Swedish startup founded in 2017 specializing in electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles. By developing smaller eVTOLs, Jetson has hailed itself as the first competitor to provide commercially available personal aerial vehicles to the public.

The startup debuted the ONE back in 2021 ahead of a limited production run and an opening of pre-orders. Since then, Jetson has been ramping up eVTOL production thanks to a $15 million funding round, led by music artist will.i.am, who is also a customer.

In the fall of 2023, Jetson announced it had been awarded two crucial flight permits in Italy, which allowed for personal eVTOL travel in the country’s uncontrolled airspace. Now, Jetson is taking its existing technology and testing its limits in the form of eVTOL races.

In doing so, Jetson has achieved a “world’s first,” but there’s some fine print.

Jetson ONE will be used for future eVTOL races

Jetson shared a press release earlier today that coincided with video footage you can peep below. The footage shows company founder and CTO Tomasz Patan demonstrating the precision and agility of the Jetson ONE by navigating around a new 8-meter (26ft) tall pylon—a new item the company is producing to hopefully encourage a new league of eVTOL races.

If you think eVTOL racing already exists, you’d be correct. Airspeeder announced a bonafide eVTOL racing series years ago and has already created teams and held aerial events—the first in the world to do so. However, Airspeeder pilots operate the eVTOLs remotely from the ground for safety reasons.

Although Airspeeder is working toward eventually holding eVTOL races with pilots onboard, Jetson now takes the crown for the world’s first eVTOL to race with someone in the vessel. I’d argue that one person lapping around a pylon doesn’t qualify as a certified eVTOL race event. Still, the video demonstrates the possibility of multiple aircraft racing side by side.

Safety concerns over the risk of mid-air collisions are another story, but I’ll leave that to Jetson to figure out.

Jetson says the ONE’s eVTOL maneuvers can be mastered in under 60 minutes of flight practice, and customers only need to complete eight sessions in a simulator before they are certified to fly the real deal. To date, Jetson has sold over 471 ONE eVTOLS priced at $128,000 each, available with a down payment of $8,000 to reserve a serial number.

Perhaps some of those owners will get together and start forming eVTOL races. I’m not ready to get up in the air, but I’d undoubtedly watch. Speaking of watching, check out Jetson’s fresh flight footage below: