Seahorse H5 amphibious VTOL concept to make first fight this year
January 15, 2025
The Seahorse H5 – a piloted, five-seater, amphibious, multicopter-configured VTOL craft – builds on learnings from the Goa-based team’s 18 scaled prototypes. With the full-scale prototype claimed to take off in 2025, it has been designed to fly at just 30ft above (exclusively) water, considerably lower than other urban air mobility ideas – although crucially, aiming to serve a sea-based segment of the market few other AAM aircraft are addressing.
Another significant difference is the Seahorse H5’s use of an internal combustion engine (able to run on traditional gasoline or sustainable ethanol) rather than the battery-electric solutions other eVTOL OEMs are employing. A Rotax engine powers 16 hydraulic motors, eight of which are connected to one of two power packs, creating redundancy within the two separate systems. This propulsion system has been developed by joint venture partner Flowcopter, which Seahorse Air says has been conducting “rigorous trials in the UK and Denmark,” including analysis of newly-designed propellers.
Seahorse Air chief design and innovation officer Deepak Pathania described 2024’s three design revisions as “[adapting] to the issue of fast changing propulsion and engine capacities,” concluding that a modular approach had subsequently informed the integration of the propulsion system in the pontoons. Along with the motor and propellors housed in the fuselage-based structure, “this patent pending modular design enables easy replaceability, easy transport, spread-out production options and simplified maintenance,” he concluded.
Speaking at Amsterdam Drone Week in April 2024, when the design of the SH5 was formally unveiled, Seahorse Air had previously indicated that the full-scale model would make its maiden flight later that year – with the aircraft to “see the light of day by late 2025”.
