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November 19, 2024November 19, 2024

The Next Move in Hybrid-Electric Revealed

For my friends catching up, Electra Aero is a very cool aviation start-up that proposes a niche vehicle in the short- to medium-haul regional transport scheme. It ain’t eVTOL… it’s eSTOL, and it uses current airplane and pilot certification bases to achieve a new meaning for short-field takeoffs and landings.

On Wednesday, November 13, Electra Aero in Manassas revealed the EL9 Ultra Short model at its development hangar at KHEF. I was last here for the unveiling of the two-seat technology demonstrator a year and a half ago, and I would not have missed being here for the unveiling we heard announced at NBAA-BACE 24 in Las Vegas last month.

One of the early test models for the Electra series of eSTOL aircraft took a place of honor at the EL9 unveiling. [Credit: Julie Boatman]

The EL-2 technology demonstrator shown alongside the coming 9-seat prototype has been making aviation over Virginia skies (and elsewhere) proving the concept—and resulting in takeoffs and landings of less than 150 feet. That’s critical for launch customers like AFWERX and other military and civilian regional transportation applications.

With a nod to aviation visionary and Electra founder John Langford, CEO B. Marc Allen and SVP JP Stewart talked the audience through the technologies within the future EL9 that leverage the advantages of hybrid-electric motors over purely jet-A driven ones. The EL-2 Goldfinch has been demonstrating these elements for the past year since its first flight in November 2023.

John Langford, founder of Electra, kicks off the reveal of the cabin mockup with Marc Allen. [Credit: Julie Boatman]

Buddy Sessoms, chief engineer from Electra, walked through the flight test program thus far, and the three enabling technologies at its core:

Blown lift
Distributed hybrid-electric power (DEP)
Fly-by-wire (FBW)

The trio come together in a way not possible before—and are anticipated to enter service on the EL9 in 2029, making possible direct travel beyond helicopters, jets, and turboprops. For example, the blown lift enables flight at such low airspeeds to reduce the takeoff and landing distance to that of a typical runway centerline stripe.

Distributed hybrid-electric power, or DEP, has been made possible by the lightweight Safran turbogenerators, designed such that 8 can be placed across the leading edge of the wing. By using a combination of currently available sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and battery power, the EL9 is projected to leverage the torque of the electric power with the long range and speed made possible by low-to-no-emission SAF.

The Safran TG 600 turbogenerator is under development for the Electra EL9 Ultra Short hybrid-electric airplane. [Credit: Julie Boatman]

And FBW? It orchestrates the blown lift and distributed power into action. “One motor fails, and automatically we shut down the opposing motor,” said Sessoms. “This leaves six remaining motors for safe flight. This is an unprecedented level of automation that is safety focused.” On a typical takeoff, the automated systems currently detect faults with minimal pilot workload. Plus, the pilot actuates this through a single throttle lever to control eight motors in concert, at all times.

“It couldn’t be safer nor simpler,” Sessoms concluded.

The unveiling revealed a full size mockup of the cabin and cargo area… it can be configured either way. Planning for a 34-inch seat pitch and the cabin 60 inches across and 58 inches high.

The full size cabin mockup of the Electra EL9 sat behind the curtain until it was revealed at the end—then opened for the audience to explore. [Credit: Julie Boatman]

We have to wait to see the actual airplane, which will go into production shortly.

So, what are the hurdles? Similar to those of other similar-sized (9-seat single-engine turboprops and light jets come to mind), even the relatively modest amount of electric power needed to make a hybrid system work at this equivalent horsepower still requires management that is quite different from the shielding and distribution currently in use in traditionally powered airplanes.

In any event, the team appears energized to the challenge—and the target niche now occupied by the Cessna Caravan or Daher Kodiak gives plenty of use cases for a real product. We’re looking forward to seeing the EL9 fly into the future with much of technology—and infrastructure—available today.

September 27, 2024September 29, 2024

Seeing the Future on the PCH

Driving back from the Santa Monica Airport to my friend’s house in Agoura Hills, I have the option of going the coastal route, skipping the 101 and its traffic vagaries and headaches.

The Pacific Coast Highway up to Malibu, with a turnoff right at Pepperdine (Waves!!) snuggles me in like a old pair of yoga pants as I join the parade past the beaches to the left and the Palisades rising to the right.

Just past the turnoff to the Bay Inn, a motion above the water ahead catches my eye. I think it’s a helicopter—those fly by regularly on this stretch of SoCal—but I register with a start that it could have been the Joby demonstrator, “N54LAX,” that had been on display all day at KSMO, in honor of Donald Douglas Day.

Had I just witnessed a milestone in history? Not quite. But I saw our future.

In a conversation with Joby founder JoeBen Bevirt last year, his tone and his passion as he related his desire to innovate point-to-point transport into a whisper-quiet, zero-emissions occurrence touched me. It came back in waves—yes—as I slowed and stopped at the next light, considering my trip up the coast versus the joyful flight those members of the Joby team would have enjoyed on their sightseeing cruise. While the 228-nm flight back home to Marina wasn’t in the cards—but could it be, at this moment in time, completed directly by airplane or helicopter—or eVTOL? In near silence, at dollars per hour instead of thousands?

Well, here we are. That future is imminent.

What a fitting close to Donald Douglas Day, celebrating a man who brought commercial air transport to the masses with the Douglas DC-3, nearly 90 years ago.

He would have *loved* the Joby, Archer, Pivotal, Pipistrel, and Airhart displays at Santa Monica on “his” day.

April 21, 2024May 4, 2024

AERO Takes on Innovation, Part 2

AERO filled its 12 halls with an electric energy, notable on the light end of the market.

And this makes sense, because the show’s DNA lies in ultralights, gliders, balloons, training airplanes—even remote-control models.

Now it has logged 30 “flights,” so to speak, running back to 1977 when it was part of a regional motorsports exhibition, and happening every other year until it became an annual event in a few years back, with a pause for two years for COVID.

When SOCATA first put its TBM 700 prototype on display in 1994, it helped introduce higher-end personal and business aviation into the show. With the presence of Pilatus, Cessna and Beechcraft (now Textron Aviation) in the 2000s, and now Gulfstream with its G500 on display this year—it indicates the importance of this growing B2B show in the marketplace for turboprops and jets.

These aircraft must also meet the industry’s commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050—and interim targets won’t likely be met by pure electric aircraft or those that run on hydrogen.

While Safran’s ENGINeUS motors gain in kWs (and equivalent horsepower) and power storage hits the 800-kW level, our brightest minds still don’t have a good way to translate that power into speed and range—and do it safely.

Case in point: Daher’s EcoPulse project, which places six Safran motors in distributed positions on its TBM-based wings powered via an Airbus storage system—but keeps a Pratt & Whitney PT6A-66D up front. Judging by the flight test profiles I talked about with Daher’s head of design, Christophe Robin, the project is working through a host of problem sets, and it won’t present as a marketable product. In SVP of aircraft Nicolas Chabbert’s update at Sun ’n Fun, and again at AERO, he noted the need to craft a salable solution that would likely look nothing like it. There are constraints and issues associated with flying around carrying that amount of battery power and distributing it safely in an airplane’s joint “cardiovascular” and “nervous” systems that still need sorting through.

Whatever they bring to the table, it won’t be flying on pure electrical power—not to make their self-imposed target date of 2027. And that makes a lot of sense. In talking with Tine Tomažič of Pipistrel, he explained that to get the speed and range you need for a good cross-country mount (such as Pipistrel’s Panthera design), you need the hybrid route for the near future. The battery tech just isn’t there yet.

So we need to keep those turbines running—and on a zero-emission fuel as soon as we can. Pressure looms larger in Europe to meet net-zero goals before 2050. While we didn’t see any protests at AERO from the general public, the specter of them loomed as we headed to Munich for our flight back across the pond. The industry is working diligently towards getting sustainable aviation fuel to the users who have vowed to adopt it—so they can keep projects like the hybrid Panthera and the EcoPulse innovating towards the future.

The way to do this is not to syphon off all the SAF to the airlines at major airports like Amsterdam’s Schipol and Paris-Orly. We can adopt book and claim practices to help offset high prices and availability of SAF to the 2,000 or so airports in the EU that business aviation uses.

And we can support the development of alternative bio sources for SAF that help increase its volume overall. Projects like Gevo’s intrigue me as cradle-to cradle solutions for utilizing biowaste on a large enough scale to make more than a drop in the bucket.

And biz av should have primary access to it first—because this is where the skunk works live and thrive.

A link to GAMA’s white paper, “Recommendations for Accelerating the Development of the Electric Aviation Sector in Europe”

January 10, 2019January 10, 2019

Records: Proof Of A Concept

The champion rarely needs further proof of success, in the hearts of public opinion. And when you’re trying to entice a reticent audience to take a risk, that proof may be the special catalyst you need.

For more than 100 years, innovators in aviation have recognized that the key to their economic viability usually lies in gaining public acceptance—and there are few more visible ways to achieve that than winning a race, or setting a new record.

When I recall the races to win various speed prizes back in the early days of commercial air transport, I see the parallels to today’s efforts to demonstrate the concepts going into electric aircraft. Case in point: Rolls-Royce building an all-electric aircraft with the intent to move the bar past 300 mph.¹ The project, part of Accelerating the Electrification of Flight—or ACCEL—shows that even a world leader in the industry can’t just toil away in isolation. A prize, and the publicity that goes with it, will be needed to catalyze acceptance. With the barriers that we must still surmount in making electric-powered aircraft the standard, having the public behind it is critical.

In 1935, Douglas Aircraft Company met a similar challenge. With its DC-1 and DC-2 flying, it faced intense competition from European manufacturers—and a still-reticent public not yet sold on the idea of transcontinental flight. The U.S.-based National Aeronautical Association (NAA) wished to recapture a raft of speed records and prove the value of American aircraft manufacturing. So TWA, who had purchased the original DC-1, loaned it in pursuit of gaining back the advantage.

“The first record-breaking attempt launched from Floyd Bennett Field on Long Island, New York, at 7 a.m. on the morning of May 16, 1935. Loaded with extra weight (to meet international class criteria), the DC-1 took off with a run of 30 seconds and headed south at 10,000 feet. For an entire day, [TWA’s experimental test pilot Tommy] Tomlinson and co-pilot Bartles flew a triangular course between New York, Washington, D.C., and Norfolk, breaking a record roughly every three hours. When the clock ticked over 1:50 a.m. the next day, they had set a new record for the 5,000 km mark (nonstop) in 18 hours, 22 minutes, and 49 seconds, at an average speed of 169.03 mph.”²

The proposed electric aircraft from Rolls-Royce’s ACCEL intends to double that mark. Though attaining a pure speed won’t fully solve other critical elements of the problems faced (battery weight and life, among others), it will surely contribute to the public’s good perception of the concept. In hot pursuit of viable electric aircraft, success will breed future acceptance.

1: “Rolls-Royce goes for record with 300mph+ electric aircraft,” published online in Flyer. 2019 Seager Publishing. Accessed January 10, 2019.

2: “Honest Vision: The Donald Douglas Story,” Julie Boatman Filucci. 2018 Aviation Supplies & Academics; page 114