This week, Germany’s ERC System emerged from stealth, unveiling an eVTOL designed explicitly for patient and casualty transport. 

A quick refresher: An eVTOL (electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing) is a fully electric aircraft capable of vertical takeoffs and landings. 

Founded in 2020, ERC is tackling a critical global gap in patient transport by developing a medical eVTOL. 

Annually, around 82 million acutely ill and injured individuals in Europe and the USA need urgent and swift medical transport. Yet, only about 1.5 million of these patients can be transported by the fastest method available — helicopters.

I spoke to CEO Dr. David Löbl to find out more. 

He explained that ERC eVTOLs will complement existing road and air transport.

“We started with the problem of patient transportation. Medical people, doctors, and medical helicopter operators approached us collectively, seeking solutions to their challenges.”

The tryanny of cost and distance when every second counts

In Germany, upcoming hospital structure reforms will increasingly centralise hospitals, expanding them into specialist clinics, and will close many hospitals and emergency rooms. As a result, the distances between the scene of an accident and the emergency hospital will increase, as will patient transfers between individual hospitals. 

Currently, there is a trade-off between cost and speed. Ambulances are slow but cheap, while helicopters are fast but expensive. ERC has designed aircraft suitable for both the secondary transfers of patients between various clinics and the initial treatment of casualties.

According to Löbl, eVTOLs are three times faster than an ambulance and three times cheaper than a helicopter.

They offer a substantial cost reduction to helicopters, factoring in purchase price, operational costs, and maintenance.  Löbl explains,

“Maintenance is significantly lower in cost due to the lower number of components compared to helicopters.” 

They also offer substantially lower energy costs than conventional diesel-powered helicopters.

The main medical development partner of ERC is a team led by Prof. Dr. Peter Biberthaler, Director of the Clinic and Polyclinic for Trauma Surgery at the Klinikumrechts der Isar of the Technical University of Munich. This ensures that the latest scientific and practical findings on the transport and care of patients with emergency-relevant diagnoses such as polytrauma, heart attack or stroke are incorporated into the development of the eVTOL.

Full size from the get go

Many eVTOL startups often begin with the development of small aircraft to be able to present the first prototypes quickly. From the start, ERC develops full-scale and full-mass demonstrators that are the same size and mass as the final product. 

Over the past three and a half years, ERC recognised that using representative weights and sizes is crucial, especially for propulsion and battery technologies and flight control. The challenges in physics and the demands on the systems grow disproportionately with size – they do not scale linearly with mass. 

This development approach means that subsequent certification is much less risky.  For example, the first demonstrator, “Echo,” successfully took off in 2023, measuring 13 metres long and weighing around 2.7 tons. It has already completed well over 100 test days and flights.  

The “Romeo” demonstrator, currently under development, was presented to the public for the first time this week. It’s first hover flight is planned for the end of 2024. The aircraft has a cabin large enough to facilitate emergency medical care mid-flight, and boasts a load capacity of 450 kg and a range of approximately 190 km on a single charge. 

Löbl detailed:

“The first demonstrations will be unmanned and help gradually forge the education and acceptance of people, especially around noise, as well as test out routes and weather conditions.

Then there will be dummy flights to reality-check medical use.”

The next aircraft, Charlie, will be produced in Germany. By 2032, the aim is to produce 250 eVTOLs per year.  

ERC joins forces with medical experts and Air Rescue organisations 

The ERC eVTOLs were designed in consultation with healthcare and rescue transport experts so that the necessary personnel and medical equipment can be transported alongside the patient. The patient is conveniently loaded from the rear, enabling a fast and efficient transfer.

The main medical development partner is the team led by Prof. Dr. Peter Biberthaler, Director of the Clinic and Polyclinic for Trauma Surgery at the Klinikum rechts der Isar of the Technical University of Munich. This ensures that the latest scientific and practical findings on the transport and care of patients with emergency-relevant diagnoses such as polytrauma, heart attack or stroke are incorporated into the development of the eVTOL.

ERC has signed a memorandum of understanding with air rescue organisations, DRF Luftrettung. who plans to test and deploy the use of ERC medical eVTOLs as part of the “eResCopter” pilot project for secondary transports together with project partners.

DRF Luftrettung sees an increasing need for additional transport capacities, particularly in secondary transport (i.e., the transportation of patients between two hospitals).

At the same time, ERC already has a cooperation partner for the market launch in the secondary sector: the Unterallgäu-Memmingen health region will be a pilot partner for the practical testing of the medical eVTOL developed by ERC in interhospital transport. 

The aim is to test the concept in practice to speed up and improve healthcare provision, particularly in rural areas, where long transportation routes between hospitals are the norm.

ERC is not the only company working on medical eVTOLs. In 2018, fellow eVTOL maker Volocopter began a partnership with ADAC Luftrettung, a German air rescue organisation, to create eVTOL aircraft specifically for medical emergencies. The company’s VoloCity aircraft are being adapted for EMS use, and  ADAC Luftrettung purchased two VoloCity aircraft and is securing options for 150 more of the next-generation aircraft.

For me, a significant obstacle to the commercial viability of eVTOLs has always been the absence of vertiports—specific sites for takeoff, landing, and recharging, or, in the case of hydrogen-powered VTOLs, refuelling.

Fully operational vertiports do not yet exist in Europe, the UK, or the US, although many sites that currently claim to be” vertiports” are actually classified as heliports. In response ERC has designed an eVTOL that does not rely on a vertiport for take off and landing.

 Löbl explained that “The ERC eVOL is designed so that we can land on standard heliports. We’re also talking with power, infrastructure, and hospital operators about putting a charging station on the footpath or next to the local airport or hospital.”

According to Löbl, the company learned a lot from early companies in the space, such as Lilium and Volocopter. 

“The critical lesson for our company is the importance of being down to earth. 

“Being in stealth mode for 3 1/2 years now, we could focus on engineering and aviation development from the beginning.

We’ve been able to build up all the processes and learn from the early movers like Lilium.”

Lead image: ERC System eVTOL. Photo: uncredited.