This week, Germany’s ERC Systems came out of stealth and unveiled an eVTOL designed specifically to transport patients and injured people.
As a quick recap, an eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) is an all-electric aircraft that can take off and land vertically.
Founded in 2020, ERC is working to address a critical global gap in patient transportation by developing medical eVTOLs.
Every year, around 82 million seriously ill or injured people require urgent and rapid medical evacuation in Europe and the United States. However, only around 1.5 million of these patients can be transported by helicopter, the fastest method available.
To find out more, we spoke to CEO Dr. David Löbl.
He explained that the ERC eVTOL will complement existing road and air transport.
“We started with the problem of patient transportation. Medical personnel, doctors and medical helicopter operators approached us as a team to find solutions to their challenges.”
Controlling cost and distance where every second counts
In Germany, upcoming hospital restructuring will lead to the centralization of hospitals, the expansion of specialized clinics, and the closure of many hospitals and emergency rooms. As a result, the distance between the scene of an accident and the emergency hospital will become longer, and the number of patients transported between individual hospitals will increase.
Currently, there is a trade-off between cost and speed: ambulances are slow but cheap, helicopters are fast but expensive. ERC designed an aircraft suitable for both secondary transport of patients between various clinics and for initial treatment of the injured.
Roble says eVTOLs are three times faster than an ambulance and three times cheaper than a helicopter.
When you take into account the purchase price, operating costs and maintenance, the cost of a helicopter can be significantly reduced.
“There are fewer parts than with a helicopter, which means maintenance costs are significantly reduced.”
It also has significantly lower energy costs than conventional diesel-engine helicopters.
The ERC’s main medical development partner is a team led by Professor Peter Bibertler, Director of the Trauma Surgery Clinic and General Medicine at the Isar Medical Center of the Technical University of Munich, ensuring that the development of eVTOLs is informed by the latest scientific and practical insights into the transport and care of patients with emergency-related diagnoses such as polytrauma, heart attack and stroke.
Full size from the start
While many eVTOL startups often start by developing small aircraft so they can quickly unveil a first prototype, ERC has been developing a full-scale, full-mass demonstrator from the start that is the same size and mass as the final product.
Over the past three and a half years, ERC has recognized that using representative weights and sizes is crucial, especially for propulsion and battery technology, and flight controls. The physics challenges and demands on the systems increase linearly with size, not linearly with mass.
This development approach significantly reduces the risks for subsequent certification. For example, the first demonstrator, Echo, is 13 metres long and weighs around 2.7 tonnes and was designed to take off successfully in 2023. It has already completed more than 100 days of testing and flying.
Image: ERC-System showed off the Romeo demonstrator of its planned Charlie eVTOL aircraft.
The Romeo demonstrator, currently under development, was unveiled for the first time this week. Its first hovering flight is scheduled for the end of 2024. It has a cabin large enough to allow for emergency medical treatment during flight, can carry 450 kg, and has a range of approximately 190 km on a single charge.
More about Löbl:
“The initial demonstrations will be unmanned and will help gradually educate and increase public acceptance, especially regarding noise, as well as test routes and weather conditions.”
This will be followed by dummy flights to verify the reality of medical use.”
Its next aircraft, Charlie, will be produced in Germany, where the aim is to produce 250 eVTOLs per year by 2032.
ERC works with medical professionals and air rescue organizations
The ERC eVTOL has been designed in consultation with medical and emergency transport experts to transport the necessary personnel and medical equipment alongside the patient, who can be easily loaded into the back for a fast and efficient transfer.
The main medical development partner is the team led by Professor Peter Biberthaler, Director of the Trauma Surgery Clinic and General Clinic at the Isar Institute of Legal Medicine at the Technical University of Munich, ensuring that the development of the eVTOL is informed by the latest scientific and practical insights into the transport and care of patients with emergency-related diagnoses such as multiple trauma, heart attack or stroke.
ERC has signed a memorandum of understanding with air rescue organisation DRF Luftrettung, which together with project partners will test and deploy the use of ERC medical eVTOLs as part of the ‘eResCopter’ pilot project for secondary transport.
DRF Luftrettung sees a growing need for additional transport capacities, especially in secondary transport (i.e. transporting patients between two hospitals).
At the same time, ERC has already secured a cooperation partner for the market launch in the secondary care sector: The Unterallgäu-Memmingen health region will be pilot partner for practical tests of a medical eVTOL developed by ERC for inter-hospital transport.
The aim is to test the concept in practice to speed up and improve the delivery of healthcare services, especially in rural areas where long-distance transport between hospitals is the norm.
ERC isn’t the only company working on medical eVTOLs. In 2018, fellow eVTOL manufacturer Volocopter partnered with German air rescue organization ADAC Luftrettung to develop an eVTOL aircraft specifically for medical emergencies. The company’s VoloCity aircraft is being modified for EMS, and ADAC Luftrettung has purchased two VoloCity aircraft with options in place for a further 150 next-generation aircraft.
For me, the big obstacle to the commercial viability of eVTOL has always been the absence of vertical take-off and landing sites, specific locations for take-off, landing and charging, or in the case of hydrogen-powered VTOLs, refueling.
There are still no fully functioning vertical takeoff and landing sites in Europe, the UK or the US, and many sites that currently claim to be “vertical takeoff and landing sites” are actually classified as heliports. In response to this, ERC has designed eVTOLs that do not require a vertical takeoff and landing site.
“The ERC eVOL is designed to be able to land on standard heliports, and we are in discussions with power, infrastructure and hospital operators about installing charging stations on sidewalks and next to local airports and hospitals,” Robl explained.
Löbl says the company learned a lot from earlier companies in the space, such as Lilium and Volocopter.
“The key lesson for us is the importance of being realistic.
“Three and a half years of operating in stealth mode has allowed us to focus on engineering and aircraft development from the very beginning.
We were able to build out the whole process and learn from pioneers like Lilium.”
Main image: ERC Systems eVTOL. Photo: Uncredited.
