eFlight Journal

The German Aerospace Center DLR is has investigating the overall system of a hybrid-electric short-haul aircraft for up to 100 passengers together with Airbus, Rolls-Royce and Bauhaus Luftfahrt e.V..This program is part of the SynergIE joint project funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi).

Research efforts are focused on new aircraft configurations that can be successfully operated commercially with significantly lower emissions and reduced noise pollution. As a final design for an aircraft with distributed hybrid-electric propulsion, the researchers selected and evaluated a concept with turbogenerators in the fuselage and 10 electric motors along the leading edge of the wing as the best solution out of the various possible arrangements. The optimal design and installation of the propellers makes it possible to reduce the chord of the wing and size of the rudder, and thus reduce energy consumption by approximately 10 percent.

“In conventional regional aircraft, the wings are often oversized in order to achieve good performance during take-off and landing,” explains Martin Hepperle from the DLR Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology. “These aircraft then have excessively high energy consumption during cruising flight.”

The flight characteristics of the prototype have already been tested in the DLR AVES flight simulator. In future, remaining questions on the aeroacoustics of the distributed propellers and on optimal flap systems for landing approaches are to be resolved.

eVTOL World Premiere at the first day of the European Rotors, Michael Kügelen showed his eMagic one for the first Time at the first day of the first edition of the EASA show.

The single seat eVTOL is a Proof of concept of a “lift and cruise” eVTOL. That means the aircraft has dedicated Motors for the vertical take off and for the c ruise flight. The full carbon aircraft was developed in a record time in onmly 2 years and has already have its maiden flights in wing mode as well as in eVTOL mode.

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Patrick Ky Executive Director of EASA the European Aviation Safety Agency and Peter Möller Chairman of EHA European Helicopter Association opend the first VTOL show today at 9 am.

EASAs first VTOL show is getting ready. The show will start tomorrow Tuesday November 16th. The show, organized by the EASA and the EHA – European Helicopter Association focuses on helicopters as well as on other VTOLs.

here are some images from ramping up.

On November 8 Embraer held a grand conference on sustainable aviation development planning. The President and CEO of Embraer Commercial Aircraft announced Embraer’s sustainable aviation plan and unveiled four matching aircraft design concepts.The overall goal is to achieve carbon neutrality by 2025.

According to Embraer’s plan, in 2030 all models produced by Embraer can use sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) reducing carbon emissions by 25% and helping the global transportation aviation industry to achieve full net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

To this end, Embraer plans to take a two-step technological development path: First, in the short to medium term, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is the main development goal to use existing infrastructure and aircraft engines and avilable technology as much as possible. The long-term plan is to take hydrogen as the aviation fuel.

Accordingly Embraer tested the full-electric demonstrator this year, and plan to test the hydrogen fuel cell demonstrator in 2025, to fly the eVTOL prototype in 2026, and by 2030 Embraer plan to have existing models to be fully compatible with 100% SAF and plan to launch new turboprop models that are fully compatible with SAF. The new hydrogen turboprop model will be tested in 2045, and the new hydrogen line of aircraft will be launched in 2050.

Embraer has cooperated with Orlando Airport in the United States to build SAF supply facilities, and cooperated with a number of SAF companies to develop and industrialize SAF, and cooperated with engine supplier Pratt & Whitney to make the existing engines compatible with SAF.

Embraer believes that Embraer’s advantage over electric aviation startups is its mature and systematic research and development capabilities, and that its advantage over other OEMs is its cost structure and relatively more flexible corporate structure, especially in turboprop area.

Embraer will not only pay attention to urban air mobility (UAM) and eVTOL, but also will attache great importance to the development of regional air mobility (RAM). Embraer believe that RAM can make full use of the existing infrastructure, and the new aircraft models developed by Embraer will be suitable for RAM use case.

On November 9 Hyundai Motor Group announced the name of its urban air mobility (UAM) division: Supernal. The UAM division is based in Washington DC, US and is headed by  Jaiwon Shin, the former NASA deputy adminstrator.

Hyundai Motor Group stepped into the eVTOL and UAM arena in 2019 when it set up the UAM division and unveiled its first eVTOL concept vehicle S-A1 at the CES in 2019, and became an OEM partner with Uber Elevate.

Hyundai Motor Group target 2028 for the launch of its UAM service. At Supernal website it states that Hyundai will focus on four elements in their eVTOL and UAM development: safety, noise, affordability and “people first”.

The video presentation of Supernal’s vision:

Supernal website:

https://supernal.aero/

A new eVTOL called eMagic with lift and cruise configuration will be shown at the European Rotors show next week. Unveiling of the aircraft is planned on November 16th at 10:20 at the booth Hall K-H8 / SD-30. Don’t miss it if you want to have more info and a clear view of the eMagic.