China has also been developing secret modern erkanoplans <a href="https://www.hisutton.com/Chinese-WIG-2025-07.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.hisutton.com/Chinese-WIG-2025-07.html</a>
"The Seaglider is designed to handle ocean swells up to a meter and a half high" - that severely limits where it can be used or during which seasons.
It would be cool to have a fast electric ferry service around the Bay Area. Ride your e-bike to the ferry terminal and get to the other side! Cool traffic dodge.
TBD but I'm hoping those constraints are largely in taxi mode! When it's flying it's much higher up:<p>> <i>Like similar “Type A” WIGs, the Viceroy’s preferred altitude is about half the length of its 19.8-meter wingspan, so 10 meters above the water. Much above that and a WIG can no longer exploit its aerodynamic edge, and loses stability.</i><p>I really want something like this to work, ideally so successfully that it keeps scaling up. Theres such beautiful aerodynamic efficiency from WIG.<p>Also a huge fan of what looks like a very smart lift generating blown wing, which also could really help this get out of the water fast, give it good efficiency
I guess you might be able to get around this problem if the vehicle can take off and land on a land based airstrip and then stay at 10m over the water. Otherwise that is a crippling limitation since you not only need the ocean to be relatively calm when taking off, but also when landing.
>> like this to work, ideally so successfully that it keeps scaling up.<p>There are hard scale issues. The wings must remain close to the water for ground effect to be a thing. But the thing still needs to bank to turn. That means one wingtip getting higher to the point it can lose GE lift, and the other lower to the point it might strike a bigger-than-average wave. The longer the wings, the less the craft can bank in a turn. Get too large and in-ground-effect flight becomes impractical/dangerous.
Good concerns honestly.<p>I wonder how much turning you could get just from adjusting motors. Especially if each of those 12 motors can individually adjust, I'd imagine you could get some decent yaw.<p>Also as per the quote which helpfully points out, WIG is typically flying half it's wing height. Since wingspan and altitude are thus linearly corresponded I'm not not sure (not convinced either way) that there's a problem (or not) from wingspan.
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What's the advantage over a catamaran or hydrofoil ferry?
Speed. 290km/h is pretty quick by maritime standards.<p>And comfort. With a 1.5m swell, you're gonna feel that in a boat. A hydrofoil will still go up and down.<p>Whereas a ground-effect vehicle is still flying, so a lot smoother.
Everything old is new again: <a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2001/1001/110.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2001/1001/110.html</a>
Here's hoping for many good-weather/calm seas days...
10m seems quite high for ground effect?
Imagine a fleet of these as ferries between Hawaii's islands for example. Awesome stuff, best of luck to the team!