10/10 on the concept. Loving the airframe design of this flying car and they’ve managed to make the ‘air barrels’ look pretty too. Back in the olden days when I was really into R/C aircraft, there were a bunch of these experimental designs floating around that used this concept of what I would describe as water wheels, but for pushing air.
The barrels can create concentrated thrust, which is an advantage over regular rotors in some ways, but it seems there is a downside. The downside is that there could be a lot more maintenance involved, keeping the barrels running smoothly (according to New Atlas) also, shout out to New Atlas (formerly Gizmag) my goto tech news site for years.
Cyclotech has top notch renderings too - Popular Mechanics worthy stuff. If this is the future we get, I wouldn’t mind seeing these in the sky at all.
Below we get to see a prototype video of the air barrel concept in action, and I’m sure if you do a YouTube search you can find some much earlier concepts of this
Love these DIY contraptions that show the basic concept in motion.
Also love seeing any funky propulsion systems, send ‘em over if you have any links that you’ve seen. That historic image earlier in the post is the Flying Barrel (not a rotor of any kind) http://fly.historicwings.com/2012/10/the-flying-barrel/
Link for CycloTech: https://www.cyclotech.at/cyclotech-presents-first-air-car-with-cyclorotors/
I also have a YouTube channel now with some shorts posted: https://www.youtube.com/@joshgordonflies/shorts