An American startup company is planning to build a 40-seat electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.

Kelekona, formed in 2019, was founded in New York City by Braeden Kelekona. His plan is to fly passengers in his company’s eVTOL by 2024 along planned routes that include Los Angeles to San Francisco, Boston to New York and New York to Washington D.C. according to an article on digitaltrends.com.

Initial plans include utilising the aircraft for cargo transportation as early as next year.

With it’s 3D-printed airframe and multiple thrust-vectoring fans, the aircraft will be powered by a modular battery pack, which will have a capacity of 3.6 megawatt hours.

“What we decided to build is a flying battery. What that allowed us to do is have greater endurance. Instead of building an interesting airframe and then trying to figure out how to put the battery into that aircraft, we started with the battery first and put things on top of it,” said Kelekona.

This vision of Kelekona’s is of course all dependant on some particular hurdles, such as receiving the go-ahead from the Federal Aviation Administration – a US governmental body.

“The FAA is still, to this day, creating the right protocols to test durability and reliability. They just want to make sure that the aircraft is [ready for whatever incident might] happen. They want to see the redundancy on your aircraft to mitigate that risk. In that regard, there’s a lot of overlap with the traditional aircraft certification, but at the same time with battery technology and electric motors, it has a different level of safety,” said Kelekona.

To see a computer simulated version of the aircraft in action, watch the video below: