EVIATION

Based in - Moses Lake, Washington Aircraft - Alice Technology route - Electric Website - https://www.eviation.co/

CEO and President is aviation industry professional Gregory Davis. Eviation was originally an Israeli start-up, co-founder Omer Bar-Yohay has now left the company. Like magniX, Eviation is owned by Singapore-based Clermont.

Eviation is currently working on an electric aircraft called the Alice (with a nod to Lewis Carroll).

Itincludesaninepassengercommuterversion,aswellasexecutiveandcargoversions.

Withaverysleek,distinctivelook,theAlicehadbeenundergoingtaxiingtrialsoverthe Spring and Summer.

The aircraft had its first test flight on 27 September as this report was going to publication, after performing several taxi tests the week before.

In preparation for the test phase, the project had in the Summer been moved to Moses Lake, Washington.

The Alice will run on a battery motor, with the engine developed by magniX. Being all electric, the Alice will have zero emissions, and have a range of just over 250 nautical miles.

The company already has an impressive list of pre-orders. This includes an order of 75 aircraft from Massachusetts based Cape Air, 50 aircraft from Florida based Global Crossing Airlines and orders from DHL.

WithHeartAerospacehavingswitchedtoahybrid-electricmodel,Eviation(andpartner magniX)isnowoneofthemosthighprofileexamplesofallelectricpoweredaircraftfor regional and commuter flights.

ApieceinRollingStoneearlierthisyear,whenfounderOmerBar-Yohaywasstillatthe company explains why the company went down the battery electric route.

Bar-Yohay concentrated on the design and weight of the aircraft, so that it could make the 250+ mile range with a battery. Nevertheless, the battery packs still weigh 8000 pounds and are on either side of the fuselage.

However, in terms of operating costs, that comes at 50%+ lower than an equivalent jet operating the same kind of routes.

Faradair

Based in - Duxford / Cambridge UK Aircraft - BEHA

Technology route - Hybrid Electric Website - https://www.faradair.com/

CEO - Neil Cloughley has an aviation background, having previously been at Cabot Aviation, Compass Capital Corporation as well as Tech Dawn Aviation Consultants in San Francisco. Neil Cloughley founded Faradair in 2014.

Though it’s been around for eight years, Faradair has recently had a renewed burst of interest and press coverage in outlets such as the BBC and Michael Gale’s Forbes podcast.

Faradair is working on a hybrid-electric 19 seater called the BEHA (Bio Electric Hybrid Aircraft). According to Neil Cloughley, the vastly reduced operating costs will allow for cheap inter-city regional routes such as London - Manchester in the UK for £25 ($29). Neil Cloughley says that these cheap hybrid-electric flights could become the Greyhound of air travel.

Faradair is another company that has decided to install MagniX’s electric motors into its aircraft, rather than design its own.

The BEHA has a very distinctive design, which involves a triple wing. The aircraft will draw on solar panels for ‘always on’ cabin ground power. It can land on very short runways, and like other aircraft in this report are cheaper to operate and maintain.

As well as MagniX, Faradair has also secured a partnership with Honeywell, to collaborate on systems and a turbogeneration unit that will run on sustainable aviation fuel to power the BEHA aircraft

Faradair intends to deliver 300 hybridelectric BEHAs into service by 2030, of which 150 will be in a firefighting configuration.

According to Runway Girl, Faradair won’t sell the aircraft, instead it will own the aircraft and sell services, in what sounds like a kind of wet lease model.

In that respect, Faradair looks to be adopting the same model as Wisk, which we profiled in our Urban Air Mobility Report. Wisk will initially operate its eVTOL aircraft on behalf of other parties.

Heart Aerospace

Based in - Gothenburg, Sweden

Technology route - Hybrid electric Aircraft - ES-30

Website - http://heartaerospace.com/

CEO - Anders Forslund was a senior researcher at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, where he coordinated the project ELISE-”Electric Air Transport in Sweden”. He started Heart Aerospace in 2018

Listen to Anders Forslund’s interview with Shashank Nigam as part of the Sustainability in the Air podcast, out in October 2022.

On September 15th, Heart Aerospace received a huge industry vote of confidence when at the company’s Hangar Day, CEO Anders Forslund announced Air Canada and Saab as investors in the company.

At the same time, Air Canada placed a firm order for 30 aircraft, and United and Mesa confirmed their order for 100 aircraft.

Other airlines looking to buy the ES-30 include Icelandair, New Zealand’s Sounds Air, SAS and Braathens.

As well as the above companies, a wider advisory board includes Air New Zealand, London City Airport, Cebu Pacific and Republic Airways.

The biggest development was however the announcement of the ES-30, a 30 seat hybrid-electric aircraft to come into service in 2028.

This replaces the 19 seat all electric 19 seat ES-19, that the company had previously been working on.

The switch to hybrid electric (or reserve hybrid as Anders Forslund calls it) and from 19 to 30 seats was made for battery weight and range reasons.

The ES-30 will have a range of 200km, or 400km if the turbine engines are used.

The new aircraft also meets many of the requirements airlines have with regional aircraft, such as the ability for passengers to take 25kg of luggage, a standard 31 inch seat pitch in a 1-2 configuration, and the option of a galley and WC in front.

Of course, the ES-30 will be very low noise, which is important given that aircraft noise is a big issue around many commuter and regional aircraft.

Anders Forslund says that the next step after the ES-30 is to work on the development of 50 seat aircraft, which would obviously start putting Heart in competition with more established regional aircraft makers such as ATR.

In fact, Anders Forslund has held out a vision of a vast decentralised network of regional routes with zero or low emission aircraft, where you can fly point to point, rather than have to go through a hub.

According to Anders Forslund, the potential exists to turn aviation from one of the most emissions heavy into one of the most sustainable and cheapest forms of transport.

To make all this possible, Heart is developing a new aircraft production facility in Gothenburg called The Northern Runway.

Speaking to Shashank Nigam as part of the Sustainability in the Air podcast, Anders Forslund estimated that bringing the aircraft to commercial flight would require around $1 billion.

Though the business has got a number of very high profile backers, Anders Forslund also held out the prospect of the market maturing to the extent that instruments such as green loan guarantees might become more prevalent.

Though Heart Aerospace hasn’t announced what electric powertrain will be used on the ES-30, Flight Global remarked that magniX, including the company’s chief technical officer, was in the audience at the company’s Hangar Day.

Based in - Everett, Washington Aircraft - Works with existing aircraft manufacturers Technology route - Electric motor manufacturer Website - https://www.magnix.aero/

CEO - Nuno Taborda joined magniX from Rolls Royce, where he was senior vice president of production programmes in Berlin, and also managing director of Rolls Royce Brazil.

With the same owner as Eviation (Singapore based investment fund Clermont), magniX can accurately be described as a GE or Rolls Royce of electric aviation.

That’s because magniX’s electric motors power other electric or hybrid-electric aircraft. As well as sister company Eviation, magniX engines will be used in the Faradair BEHA.

As mentioned previously, representatives of magniX were also present during Heart Aerospace’s recent Hangar Day, so it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to see an announcement over the next year about magniX’s engines making it into the ES-30.

Perhaps one of the high profile customers of magniX is Canadian sea-plane company Harbour Air, which has been working with magniX over the past few years on retrofitting the company’s aircraft.

On 17 August, the first point to point commercial aircraft flight took place when Harbour Air flew a converted De Havilland Beaver floatplane (“eBeaver”) from Vancouver to Victoria, British Columbia.

Harbour Air says that this is the next step towards offering regular electric commercial flight on its British Columbia route network.

Another major retrofit project is that announced by magniX’s Australian partner Dovetail, to convert aircraft from Australian airline Rex, which is one of the largest remaining operators of the Saab 340 in the world.

In Brazil, magniX and aeronautical company, DESAER has signed an agreement to develop the ATL-100H, a hybrid electric iteration of the ATL-100 regional aircraft. The ATL-100H is expected to save between 25 - 40 percent of fuel depending on the range of the operation

As well as battery-electric and hybrid-electric aircraft, magniX is also involved in the hydrogen-electric space, with Universal Hydrogen.

Universal Hydrogen is developing a retrofit conversion kit for the De Havilland Canada DHC8-Q300 (which will also be applicable to the ATR 42 family of aircraft) to a hydrogen fuel cell electric powertrain. magniX will be providing the electric propulsion system powering the converted 40-passenger regional aircraft.

Finally, last year magniX was selected as one of two companies to support NASA’s Electric Powertrain Flight Demonstration (EPFD) that will rapidly mature Electrified Aircraft Propulsion (EAP) technologies through ground and flight demonstrations.

As part of this, magniX received $74.3 million (GE, the other recipient, got $179 million).

Regent

Based in - Boston, MA Aircraft - Viceroy Seaglider Technology route - Electric Website - https://www.regentcraft.com/

CEO - Billy Thalheimer founded REGENT after years spent as an aerospace program manager, business development leader, and multidisciplinary aerospace engineer. During his time at Aurora Flight Sciences, Billy was responsible for developing new programs in vehicle design and technology maturation to support Aurora’s portfolio of future air mobility solutions.

Co-Founder and CTO Mike Klinker spent years at Airware, Raptor Maps, MIT Lincoln Labs, and Aurora Flight Sciences designing and operating innovative unmanned vehicles and developing systems to increase safety in aviation.

REGENT (Regional Electric Ground Effect Nautical Transport) seeks to offer “Coastal Travel. 100% electric.” It wants to do that through the deployment of a next generation seaplane, or “float, foil, fly” sea glider.

It’s not quite an aircraft, but not quite a boat either, and it could take business away both from regional air-routes as well as ferry services.

With eight engines, it will have top speeds of 180km and glide just above the surface of the water.

The initial model, the Viceroy, will take just 12 passengers, and is meant to be in service in three years.

However, there are plans for a much larger seaglider called the ‘Monarch’, with the aim being that this enters service by the end of the decade.

With a 180 nautical mile range, the Viceroy will be applicable to coastal, island or Great Lake services.

There are plenty of those to make REGENT a more than viable business, as 40% of the world’s population lives in coastal communities. and investors Thiel Capital, Mark Cuban (Shark Tank, Dallas Maverick) and Fitbit founder James Park obviously think so as well.

For example, it could run on major urban routes like Chicago - Milwaukee, BarcelonaValencia, Boston- NYC, or Seattle-Vancouver, just to name a few.

Because the Viceroy won’t go very far above the water, it doesn’t have to go through aviation authority regulators, instead maritime rules apply and French classification authority Bureau Veritas has given it initial in-principle approval.

Hawaiian Airlines has come on board as a strategic investor in REGENT, with an eye on developing the 100 seat Monarch, which Hawaiian can then use on island routes.

Another investor and early customer is Mesa, which wants to buy 200 seagliders for fast coastal city to city connections.

Overall, REGENT says it has a huge $7 billion in pre-orders.

Finally, with REGENT’s seagliders competing with both shipping and air routes, Brittany Ferries is on board, with an eye to using them on cross (English) channel routes.

Universal Hydrogen

Based in Los Angeles, California Aircraft - Retrofitting existing aircraft Technology - Hydrogen Electric Website - https://hydrogen.aero/

CEO - Prior to co-founding Universal Hydrogen, CEO Paul Eremenko was SVP & CTO at United Technologies Corp., where he led the 30,000-strong engineering function, as well as research, technology, and innovation activities across the company. Before UTC, Paul was CTO at Airbus, where among other things he spearheaded flight demonstrators for hybrid-electric propulsion. Paul Eremenko is also on the board of Eve, which is on our UAM power-list

Co-founder John-Paul Clarke is a Professor at UT Austin, Georgia Tech and MIT. a Co-founder of multiple technology startups and a former senior executive at United Technologies.

John-Paul Clarke appeared on season one of Sustainability in the Air with Shashank Nigam, listen to it here

Like ZeroAvia, who we also feature in this report, Universal Hydrogen is banking on hydrogen electric or hydrogen fuel cell technology.

Then in the future, for larger aircraft, Universal Hydrogen implies that hydrogen combustion as opposed to hydrogen electric will be the way forward.

Universal’s hydrogen technology uses electric motors and fuel cells. Hydrogen and Oxygen react in the fuel cell to produce electricity and water. This electricity powers the motor.

Universal Hydrogen Conversion kits

Like ZeroAvia, Universal Hydrogen is also going down the road of converting existing aircraft, rather than making new ones.

Universal Hydrogen’s first product is a conversion kit for existing regional aircraft, starting with the ATR72 and the De Havilland Canada Dash-8.

This consists of a fuel cell electric powertrain that replaces the existing turboprop engines. It also accommodates, in the rear of the fuselage, hydrogen capsules that are transported from green hydrogen production sites to the airport and loaded directly into the aircraft using the existing intermodal freight network and cargo handling equipment.

As mentioned previously, Universal Hydrogen is working with maginX on the electric motor.

Orders so far include a firm commitment from Avmax Aircraft Leasing Inc. to convert 20 regional aircraft to run on green hydrogen.

Within this order, Avmax has the flexibility to select between Universal Hydrogen’s ATR

72-600 and Dash 8-300 conversion kits.

Connect Airlines, a division of Waltzing Matilda Aviation has placed a firm order to convert 75 ATR 72-600 regional aeroplanes to hydrogen powertrains, with purchase rights for an additional 25 conversions. Deliveries will start in 2025.

This forms part of Connect’s strategy to be the world’s first zero emissions airline.

Earlier this year, French airline Amelia announced a LOI for three ATR 72600 hydrogen conversion kits. This announcement follows Amelia’s November 2021 launch of ‘Amelia Green,’ an internal pledge from the airline to actively find sustainable options to decrease its carbon output.

Universal Hydrogen is working with Deutsche Aircraft on a conversion of the Dornier 228. And the company also has letters of intent for conversions from Icelandair, Air Nostrum and Ravn Alaska

Investors in Universal Hydrogen include Playground Global, Fortescue Future Industries, Coatue, Global Founders Capital, Plug Power, Airbus Ventures, JetBlue Technology Ventures, Toyota AI Ventures, Sojitz Corporation, and Future Shape

Based in Hollister, California and Kemble, UK Aircraft - Retrofitting existing aircraft Technology - Hydrogen Electric Website - https://www.zeroavia.com/

CEO - Prior to founding ZeroAvia, CEO and founder Val Miftakhov was Founder & CEO of eMotorWerks, developing SmartGrid-integrated EV Charging technologies. He also worked at Google as Head of R&D, Google for Work Incubation, responsible for identifying & prototyping top candidates for new Google products targeted at Businesses, Education, and Governments.

Listen to Val Miftakhov’s interview with Shashank Nigam as part of the Sustainability in the Air podcast, out in October 2022.

ZeroAvia is developing “a zero emission powertrain for aviation”, with Val Miftakhov betting on being hydrogen-electric (or hydrogen fuel-cell) technology.

The reason is explained in the above chart that he shows in his presentations and sits on the ZeroAvia website.

He believes it is zero emissions, with low NOx emissions and is scalable.

As we said earlier, hydrogen solutions do however pose more of an infrastructure problem.

Val Miftakhov believes that this can be overcome and is working on an infrastructure solution, where hydrogen is actually made on site (at each airport), as opposed to having to be transported in.

He also points out that an advantage of hydrogen-electric over electric or hybridelectric, is that especially if an aircraft has a fairly heavy rotation, then the battery will soon need to be replaced.

ZeroAvia says it is already well advanced in plans to certify its ZA600, 600kW powertrain for smaller, 10-20 seat aircraft, with entry into service planned for 2024. The current retrofit for tests is a 19 seat Dornier 228.

Concurrently, the company is working on ZA2000, a 2-5MW modular powertrain which targets support for 40-80 seat turboprops by 2026.

The ZA2000RJ powertrain will expand this technology to enable passengers to fly in zero-emission regional jets as early as the late 2020s.

Airlines on board as investors

ZeroAvia has an impressive list of backers. In August, American Airlines announced an investment, with the opportunity to buy 100 ZeroAvia engines.

American joins other major airlines as investors.

For example, United Airlines came on board in December. United expects to buy up to 100 of the company’s ZA2000RJ engines.

United says the engine could be retrofitted to existing United Express aircraft as early as 2028.

IAG and Alaska Airlines have similarly invested in ZeroAvia.

Saudi Arabia’s new NEOM development has put money in the business, while the Red Sea Development Corporation is looking to use ZeroAvia engines on zero emissions tourist flights.

Meanwhile, ZeroAvia has agreements to either develop an airport hydrogen infrastructure, or sell ZeroAvia engines with Edmonton International Airport, Ravn Alaska and Monte Aircraft Leasing.

Retrofitting and line-fitting aircraft

ZeroAvia’s model involves working directly with aircraft manufacturers, in modifying existing aircraft. Like magniX it could be seen as a GE or Rolls Royce of zero emissions aviation.

Additionally, as Val Miftakhov said to Shashank Nigam as part of his Sustainability in the Air podcast interview, the company is line fitting as well as retrofitting planes.

With its partnership with manufacturers such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, it will be possible to buy a new aircraft powered by ZeroAvia’s hydrogen-electric technology, with an eye on CRJ regional jets.

ZeroAvia says that over 2,000 CRJ Series aircraft have been built since the launch of the program, effectively establishing itself as the backbone of regional aviation in the United States.

As mentioned, United has a particular interest in converting the regional jets in use by United Express.

The company is also working with De Havilland Canada on the Dash 8-400 offering ZeroAvia’s hydrogen-electric engine as a line-fit option for new aircraft, as well as developing an OEM-approved retrofit program for in-service aircraft.

Finally, like magniX, ZeroAvia is looking for its powertrains to be inside completely new next generation aircraft. This includes Otto Aviation, where ZeroAvia will develop hydrogen-electric powertrains for the company’s Celera aircraft.

As well as NEOM, American, Alaska Airlines, IAG and United, ZeroAvia’s investors include Barclays Bank and AENU.

With its test and production facilities based in the UK, ZeroAvia additionally benefits from UK Government grants.