BENGALURU: City-based Sarla Aviation completed a flight-test campaign for Sylla, its half-scale electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) technology demonstrator, on July 1. The demonstrator logged more than 500 tests and over 18 hours of flight testing across six months, making the 700 kg-class, 7.5-metre-wingspan aircraft the heaviest electric aircraft ever to take off in India.
The first version – Sylla 1.0 – is built to validate aircraft-level and system-level integration under real operating conditions. The time elapsed from design to flight was under 12 months, which was conducted within a budget of less than USD 13 million.
“Sylla has given us the data we set out to capture, and those learnings are already sha-ping our next-gen aircraft as we move towards transition and sustained wing-borne flight on our journey to our 6+1 air taxi Shunya,” said co-founder and chief techno-logy officer Rakesh Gaonkar.
The company is India’s first to: build and fly a 700 kg-class electric aircraft capable of vertical take-off; fly a 400-volt electric power-train architecture; demonstrate a distributed-propulsion wing system; complete full-stack ground testing in accordance with airworthiness regulations.