eVTOL Hype and Helicopter Reality, with David Smith

By John Zimmerman
May 20, 2025
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Pilot's Discretion Podcast, episode 104

As the first CEO of Robinson Helicopter not named Robinson, David Smith has combined the company’s old fashioned manufacturing philosophy with a new focus on innovation. He talks about the result of that work, including the launch of the new R88 turbine helicopter and the first flight of a hydrogen-powered Robinson. David is also an experienced engineer, so he dives into the details of mast bumping and explains why many eVTOL aircraft will never succeed. In the Ready to Copy segment, David talks about the helicopter job market, heli-camping, and flight simulator myths.

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Quotes:

Why Robinson is different: “At the core of what we do, we want it to feel like a family.
Integrated manufacturing as a strength: “We’re going to make the commitment to make things.”
Hard-working helicopters: “They use these as mission critical tools in their toolbox, but they get exposed to very difficult, corrosive environments.”
Why a single engine turbine is the right answer: “Most of the missions, though, where twins have been adopted—honestly they were because that’s what the OEMs produced.”
A realistic approach to new engines: “The reality is, there’s gonna be a need to burn jet fuel for much longer, and avgas as well.”
How a new autopilot could change things: “If we could… fully mitigate mast bumping, two-bladed systems are more efficient. They’re better at power, they’re better at hover, they’re better at autorotation.”
The hype from eVTOL companies: “It’s a lot of folks that fundamentally have never developed or certified any aviation product at all.”
Why electric isn’t easy for aviation: “You see a lot of electrification in cars—we’ll just throw those batteries in the air and it’ll work perfectly. It does not. They’re not the same missions or duty cycles.”
The hidden costs of the eVTOL boom: “We’ve got three critical resources that the eVTOL industry is hurting right now: regulatory capacity, engineering capacity, and supplier capacity. Each of those is being divided across a whole bunch of startups that likely will not make it.”
Why reliability beats fancy designs: “Dispatch reliability builds the market.”
Flight simulator myths: “The generation of sims that people were trained on 20-30 years ago are not today’s sims. Things have changed.”