“…Of the hundreds of eVTOL concepts that have emerged in recent years, relatively few have flown in full-scale form, and even fewer with a person on board. Last week saw the debut of a model that has done both: the eMagic One from Germany’s eMagic Aircraft.

The single-seat, tandem-wing plane is strictly a proof of concept aircraft, according to eMagic co-founder Michael Kügelgen. “There is no market — we are not interested in selling this single-seater to anybody,” he told eVTOL.com last week at European Rotors, the trade show in Cologne, Germany, where the eMagic One was unveiled. Nevertheless, he said, it is a “first and very important milestone” on the way to a larger, more capable model that could be used for personal transportation and other missions.

Kügelgen, a mechanical engineer who develops specialized machinery, including a part of SpaceX’s production line, established eMagic in partnership with Thomas Senkel, a physicist who in 2011 became the first person to fly on an electric multicopter when he took to the air on a simple frame aircraft built around a yoga ball.

The company behind that flight, e-volo, evolved into Volocopter, but Senkel exited it after 2015. He and Kügelgen have been collaborating on eMagic since 2018, with Senkel responsible for the aircraft’s propulsion system and battery technology, Kügelgen for the airframe, and a small team of friends and experts supporting other aspects of the project…”