Sarla Aviation Completes Sylla Flight Tests in Push Toward Passenger eVTOL
Sarla Aviation has completed flight testing of Sylla, India’s heaviest electric aircraft to take off. The six-month campaign logged more than 500 tests and over 18 hours of flight testing for the half-scale eVTOL technology demonstrator.
Sylla 1.0 is a 700 kg-class aircraft with a 7.5-metre wingspan. It was built to validate aircraft-level and system-level integration under real operating conditions, including the interaction of electric propulsion, battery architecture, distributed propulsion, flight-control algorithms, airframe and landing gear.
The programme marks several firsts for Indian electric aviation. Sarla said Sylla is the first 700 kg-class electric aircraft capable of vertical take-off to be built and flown in India, the first to fly a 400-volt electric powertrain architecture, the first to demonstrate a distributed-propulsion wing system and the first to complete full-stack ground testing in line with airworthiness regulations.
The company said Sylla 1.0 met its engineering objectives and generated the flight data needed for the next phase. Sarla has started work on Sylla 2.0, an upgraded demonstrator designed to pursue controlled transition from hover to sustained wing-borne flight, a key technical milestone before development of a certifiable passenger eVTOL.
Bengaluru-based Sarla was founded in 2023 by former Lilium executives Rakesh Gaonkar and Adrian Schmidt. Its flagship programme is a six-seat electric air taxi aimed at cutting commute times in congested Indian cities including Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi and Pune; the Sylla campaign gives the company a larger data base as it moves toward transition flight and a future passenger aircraft.