As AERO–the largest general aviation trade show in Europe, and the first and the largest electric aviation trade show in the world–e-Flight-Expo–are going to take place from 27-30 April in Friedrichshafen, Germany, there are many exciting product releases and market development at the show after a two-year postpone due to the pandemic.
As the co-founder and co-organizer of e-Flight-Expo, we publish Aero and e-Flight-Expo special edition as usual and they are now online for FREE! Even better, they are available in English, German and Chinese lanuages. You can read it here: https://www.flying-pages.com/index.php?id=1462
We will report more show news on the ground and are looking forward to meetign you at our booth No.100 in hall A7–the begining of the “sustainable aviation trail” or SAT at the show. For more information about AERO and e-flight-expo, please visit the official webpage: https://www.aero-expo.com/about-aero/aero-branches/e-flight-expo
The Norwegian electric aviation startup Elfly is designing an fully electric-powered amphibian flying boat and has received $1.8 million funding from the Research Council of Norway. The hull’s design is currently being tested at SINTEF ‘s tow tank in Trondheim. The research that will provide data for the design of the optimal hull is a separate research project supported by Norway’s Regional Research Fund.
According to the CEO of Elfly Eric Lithun, the goal is to be able to offer flexible mobility in Norway, have zero emissions, significantly less noise pollution and develop new sustainable business models. The design goal is to fly 200km at about 250 km/hour. Lithun hopes that with this electric flying boat, the travel time from Bergen to Stavanger will be 40 minutes compared to four to five hours by car. Eventually the electric flying boat will able to fly from Bergen to Trondheim via a stopover in Molde, which will be noticeable from center to center and will beat all other options even with a stopover. Lithun believes that the main reason why seaplanes are not already widespread is because today’s aircraft have internal combustion engines that suck in oxygen and salt water that corrodes the engine which leads to sky-high maintenance costs to operate. By switching to electricity, this problem disappears.
A sub-scale RC model currently being used to test the hull design
The electric flying boat will have room for nine passengers, and Elfly will offer flights on a par with other commercial players. The goal of Elfly is to have 15 to 20 such flying boat in the air by 2030. In addition to passenger travel, the flying boat can also be used for freight transport, ambulance transport and premium flights where you can charter the entire aircraft. Lithun envisages that it can be used for exclusive electric plane safaris.
On 4 April 2022 Pipistrel and Lobo Leasing Limited, a global vertical lift leasing platform, signed a letter of intent with deposits for the acquisition of 15 Nuuva V300 autonomous VTOL cargo drone develoiped by Pipistrel.
As part of the agreement, Lobo leasing and Pipistrel will collaborate to build and connect a base of operators and investors, and by using Lobo’s existing global platform, deliver customer-driven bespoke leasing solutions to enhance the deployment of the Nuuva V300 aircraft in different types of missions globally.
NUUVA V300 cargo drone
The NUUVA V300 is a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) UAV for middle mile logistics with a 3 cubic meter capacity, and under favorable flight conditions, the vehicle can carry 460kg up to 400km. It is designed to operate 10x more economically than today’s helicopters, it requires no runways, and it brings enhanced safety and reliability using Pipistrel’s already type-certified electric engines.
Aviation Safety Resources (ASR) announced the acquisition of Pioneer Aerospace, a specialist of whole airframe emergency parachute recovery systems. ASR plans to rebrand Pioneer Aerospace to ASR-Pioneer. Pioneer Aerospace’s product line includes payload delivery deceleration equipment, recvery systems, and kits to support specialized programs ranging from aviation to space projects.
ASR hopes that the new company ASR-Pioneer will capture the growing eVTOL market and new light airplane models. In August 2020 Bye Aerospace, the developer of eFlyer series electric airplanes, signed up ASR for the deveopment of the whole aircraft parachute recovery systems.
A rendering graphic of the eFlyer 2 electric airplane of Bye Aerospace rescued by a whole airframe parachute system
A new effort to foster sustainable sevelopment of the UAM ecosystem in Europe called “European Urban Air Mobility Projects & Initiatives Community” was launched during the Amterdam Drone Week.
The newly launched community consolidates the efforts of 18 relevant projects across Europe run by both EU and individual European countries and aims to establish a Pan-European collaborative platform to facilitate knowledge sharing across UAM projects and initiatives in Europe.
A total of 18 UAM-related projects are gathered into this community
Urban Air Mobility (UAM) projects and initiatives across Europe are increasingly on the rise. Whether they are projects funded, or practical initiatives supported, by the European Union (EU), Member States or Local Authorities, they all have an impact on cities and regions across Europe. The EU UAM Projects & Initiatives Community aims to set the stage for Urban Air Mobility by establishing a collaborative and exchange platform linked to the European Green Deal and Digital Agenda, in which each project is contributing with its own focus and expertise.
On March 24, 2022 the European Union Aviation Safety Agency published the world’s first guidance for the design of vertiports, the ground infrastructure needed for the safe operation of Urban Air Mobility services such as air taxis in locations across Europe, including in urban areas.
The Prototype Technical Design Specifications for Vertiports offers guidance to urban planners and local decision-makers as well as industry to enable the safe design of vertiports that will serve these new types of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft, which are already at an advanced stage of development.
“Urban air mobility is a completely new field of aviation and we therefore have a unique opportunity to develop a set of infrastructure requirements from scratch,” Patrick Ky, Executive Director of EASA said. “With the world’s first guidance for safe vertiport operations, EASA’s ambition is to provide our stakeholders with the ‘gold standard’ when it comes to safe vertiport design and operational frameworks. By harmonising design and operational standards for vertiports we will support European industry, who are already starting to embark on exciting projects in Europe and around the world to make new urban air mobility a reality.”
a funnel-shaped area above the vertiport, designated as an“obstacle free volume”
One notable innovation is the concept of a funnel-shaped area above the vertiport, designated as an “obstacle free volume”. This concept is tailored to the operational capabilities of the new VTOL aircraft, which can perform landing and take-off with a significant vertical segment. Depending on the urban environment and on the performance of certain VTOL-capable aircraft, omnidirectional trajectories to vertiports will be also possible. Such approaches can more easily take account of environmental and noise restrictions and are more suitable for an urban environment than conventional heliport operations, which are constrained in the approaches that can be safely applied.
There are some images circulating on the Chinese social media which are claimed to be the patent application of HT Aero for a roadable eVTOL flying car, i.e. a vehicle with both driving and flying functions.
The design in the images appears to be a tilt-rotor configuration with wings. There is no further detail about the folding mechanism.
HT Aero is an eVTOL startup based in Guangzhou, China. HT Aero was acquired by the Chinese electric car company Xpeng in 2020 and revealed a design concept of a roadable eVTOL flying car last year as shown below. HT Aero plans to begin sale of this flying car in 2024 for a projected price tag of one million RMB (157,000 USD or 143,000 euro)
On 22 March 2021 the Japanese eVTOL startup SkyDrive and Suzuki Motor Corporation jointly announced a partnership for the commercialization of the eVTOL developed by SkyDrive.
SkyDrive and Suzuki will start consideration to collaborate in areas of business and technology that include technology R&D, planning of manufacturing and mass-production systems, development of overseas markets with an initial focus on India which is the major market for Suzuki Motor, and promotion of efforts to attain carbon neutrality.
SkyDrive was founded in 2018. The companay has been test flying its SD-03 single-seat multicopter eVTOL prototype since at least 2020 and aims to begin air taxi service during the 2025 World Exposition in Osaka, Japan, as well as to initiate service in other regions of Japan.
In Japan, the Public-Private Council for Air Mobility Revolution was established in 2018 with meetings held since then. The project is expected to lead to taxi services in urban areas, new means of transportation for remote islands and mountainous areas, and emergency transportation in times of disaster. A roadmap has been formulated by the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism (MLIT) for the start of business in 2023 and full-scale deployment in 2030.
Whisper Aero, the electric aviation startup founded by the eVTOL veteran and former exectutive of Uber Elevate Mark Moore, unveiled their first product at the Heli-Expo in Dallas, US–an electric drone named “Whisper Drone”.
Whisper Drone
The Tennessee-based company said the the drone is designed to be very quite and highly efficient, is intended for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) use, and has finished validation testing for the Pentagon. Based on validation testing, the US Air Force has awarded Whisper Aero two contracts totaling $1.5 million to further the project development. The company did not yet specify any further details of the drone.
Mark Moore set up Whisper Aero in 2020 to pursue ultra-quiet and efficient electric propulsion for aviation use. Besides Whisper Drone, the company is developing Whisper Jet, a regional electric airplane. The company has raised at least $7.5 millions USD according to public report before winning the research contracts of the US Air Force this time.
AutoFlight today announced the successful completion of the transition test flight of the proof-of-concept eVTOL prototype named “Prosperity I” , in which the aircraft switches from a vertical take-off motion to the more energy efficient, horizontal flight and back to vertical flight, before landing. The successful transition test flight was achieved in January 2022. The unmanned flight, which took place at Autoflight flight test area in JiangSu province, China with CEO Tian Yu, the R&D team and 40 AutoFlight staff present, while Prosperity I rose to an altitude of 150 meters at speeds of up to 123 mph (196km/h).
Footage of the transition test flight:
Prosperity I was designed for short transfers between parts of a city, airport commutes, connecting two nearby cities or enabling trips to the countryside while avoiding traffic on the ground. Autoflight expect it to be ready for commercial flight in 2025.
A ‘transition’ is when an aircraft moves from a vertical to horizontal motion and is one of the most challenging parts of an eVTOL flight. Vertical flight for the proof of concept for Prosperity I required eight rotors to lift the 3,307 pounds, including four-person, state-of-the-art electric aircraft into the air. Once the aircraft reached an altitude of 150 meters and the airspeed of 100-110mph the fixed wing part of the eVTOL generated lift. At this point, Prosperity I entered the complex transition phase – the rotors on the top stopped spinning and locked in a streamlined position, whilst the propellers on the rear pushed the aircraft forward like a traditional fixed wing plane.
AutoFlight CEO Tian Yu, who has over two decades of experience designing and building electric aircraft, and 300 electric aviation-related patents, said:
“The team and I are thrilled to have cracked the smooth transition phase of eVTOL flight, unlocking the skies for Prosperity I and our commercial products. We were confident we had a good design underpinned by sound engineering, and delighted to see that the transition was smooth, safe and seamless.”
Mark Henning, Managing Director of AutoFlight Europe said:
“Achieving a smooth transition phase in record time, from prototype to flight. Underlines the caliber of the engineering team we have at AutoFlight and gives great confidence as we progress into the development phase and layout plans for our first manned aircraft, the Prosperity I. The simplicity of AutoFlight’s design lies in our patented ‘Lift and Cruise’ configuration, which combines superior range and safety with low technical complexity, making it affordable to manufacture, maintain and operate as an air taxi.”
The milestone is the latest of significant recent developments for AutoFlight including the establishment of a European base in Augsburg, Germany, the appointment of Mark Henning (formerly of Airbus) as its European Managing Director, as well as $100 million investment from next-generation mobility investor Team Global.
