Kitty Hawk Heaviside Makes eVTOL Flights Personal
The Kitty Hawk Heaviside eVTOL is a single-seat electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that brought personal autonomous flight closer to practical reality. Unveiled in October 2019 by Kittyhawk Corporation, a company backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, the Heaviside (internally designated HVSD) is notable not just for its performance but for solving one of eVTOL's most persistent challenges: noise in urban environments.
How Quiet Is the Kitty Hawk Heaviside?
The Heaviside uses eight tilting, variable-pitch electric propellers, two at the front and six along the main wing, to achieve vertical takeoff and transition to efficient forward flight. While takeoff and landing produce elevated noise levels, cruising flight registers as low as 35 dBA at 1,500 ft altitude, roughly comparable to a quiet residential street. For comparison, conventional helicopters typically measure 85 dBA or more at equivalent distance. This acoustic advantage is critical for urban air mobility, where noise pollution is often the primary regulatory and community barrier to eVTOL operations.
Performance: Range, Speed and Footprint
In flight trials, the Heaviside demonstrated a range of up to 100 miles (160 km) and reached speeds of 180 mph. Kitty Hawk cited the example of flying from San Jose to San Francisco in approximately 15 minutes, a journey that can take well over an hour by car. The aircraft requires only a 30 x 30 ft (9 x 9 m) unpaved surface for takeoff and landing, removing the need for purpose-built infrastructure. It carries a single occupant and weighs roughly one-third of a comparable Cessna light aircraft, a weight advantage that directly extends battery range and improves efficiency. According to Aviation Today's original Heaviside reveal coverage, the tilting propeller configuration allows a smooth aerodynamic transition from vertical hover to efficient fixed-wing cruise.
Personal eVTOL and the Air Taxi Vision
Kitty Hawk designed the Heaviside for both private ownership and air taxi deployment. The absence of fixed infrastructure requirements was a deliberate product decision: if an aircraft can land anywhere, it sidesteps the enormous capital cost of building vertiport networks from scratch. Vertical Magazine's profile of Kitty Hawk's development journey describes the Heaviside as the culmination of a decade of engineering refinement focused on maximising range efficiency in a lightweight form factor. Although Kittyhawk Corporation wound down in September 2022, its technology and team influenced the broader eVTOL sector, with its joint venture Wisk Aero continuing development of autonomous air taxi technology under Boeing.
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