Oxis Battery Lost, Other Batteries Found?

Dean Sigler Announcements, Batteries, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Announcing pending bankruptcy last week, Oxis Energy surprised those of us who did not see the impending problem.  One major supporter of Oxis is George Bye, because his eFlyer line of aircraft were all slated to fly on their power.  Contacted through company Vice President Diane Simard, Bye issued the following statement: “Bye Aerospace’s eFlyer 800 program remains on track,” said George E. Bye, CEO of Bye Aerospace. “We continue to support Oxis Energy, their lithium-sulfur cell technology, leadership, team and owners. These types of transitions occur in every industry.”  Other batteries may wait in the wings, so to speak. Oxis prefaced its web site with the following announcement: “OXIS Energy Limited is in administration.  Simon Girling and Christopher Marsden were appointed Joint Administrators of the Company on 19 May 2021. Simon Girling is authorized to act in the UK as an Insolvency Practitioners by the Insolvency Practitioners Association. Christopher Marsden is authorized to act in the UK as an …

Work Begins on Production eFlyer 2

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For the last year or so, Bye Aerospace has grown a burgeoning order book, with over 700 aircraft on call, but only one or two real-world examples flying.  That’s changing now, with a new motor from Safran and Composites Universal Group (CUG) assembling an actual production eFlyer 2 fuselage. Parts of the video may seem like comparing apples and bananas, or even cumquats, with aircraft of different missions and levels of development (the Airbus eFan having left the building years ago), but several points of interest remain.  Where are 92 kilowatt-hours of battery hiding in the 662 kilogram – 1,459 pound airframe (empty weight)?  That’s equivalent to the energy of an early Tesla S and probably a significant chunk of the total aircraft weight. A New Motor Bye has been busy formulating the design of is two- and four-seat aircraft, dropping its original plan to bedeck its wings with solar panels, and running though a gamut of available power plants.  …

Wisk Tests Cora in US, New Zealand

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Recently renamed Wisk (formerly KittyHawk) has resumed flight testing of its Cora eVTOL (electric Vertical Take Off and Landing) machines following a cautionary corona virus shutdown.  It’s already got a fleet, with several prototypes in the U. S. and at least four in New Zealand. New Zealand seems to have a lock on flight testing for unpiloted aircraft, with Pyka and Cora both finding amenable administrators willing to allow flight tests.  Boeing and Wisk are collaborating on achieving urban air mobility with the two-seat machine, and getting a lot of positive vibes from the locals.  Partly from the NZ government, partly from local businesses, and partly from indigenous Maori tribes’ people, Wisk and Cora have found wide-spread acceptance down under. Government Support Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods announced last October that, “The Government is establishing an Airspace Integration Trials Program to support the safe testing and development of advanced unmanned aircraft and accelerate their integration into the aviation …

Bye Aerospace Expands Its Horizons

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Bye Aerospace has been making inroads into both battery development and flight training with partners on an international scale.  Alliance with Oxis Energy As reported in July, Bye Aerospace and OXIS Energy announced a collaborative program to achieve a 50-to 100-percent increase in flight time from a single charge compared to existing batteries.  On its web site, OXIS reveals that it is, “…developing a <30 kWh battery system integrated with an Aviation Battery Management System for a two-seater electric passenger aircraft.”  The partnership, “…seeks to achieve a 50% to 100% increase in flight time from a single charge on future Bye Aerospace eAircraft,” with cells exceeding 500 Watt-hours per kilogram at 20 Amp-hour capacity.  This will lead to weight reduction and increased flight duration.   Quantum Air, OSM and Bye Form a Synergistic Enterprise Quantum Air is a short-range carrier with a mission.  “Our mission is simple and prevalent throughout our brands.  To change the way people travel through cutting-edge …

OXIS Energy, Bye Aerospace Develop Lithium-Sulfur Cells

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Diane Simard, Senior Vice President and a member of the Board of Directors for Bye Aerospace, sends your editor occasional news from that company.  The latest involves a collaboration with OXIS Energy in England to develop new Lithium-Sulfur battery cell technology that shows great, and (even better) near-term promise. Ready to start in September, the project will develop cells that will, ”Achieve the higher energy density required for such aircraft,” referring to Bye’s eFlyer 2 and eFlyer 4 light aircraft.  A big jump over currently available batteries, OXIS is now evaluating cells that produce 400 Watt-hours per kilogram, with a promised leap to 500 kW-hr by next year.  The best lithium-ion cells at the pack level available now manage 260 W-hr/kg. Huw W. Hampson-Jones, CEO of OXIS Energy, discusses his company’s unique approach to battery development and what this portends for future flight and general electric mobility.  Explaining OXIS’s applications, he adds, “Aviation is one of OXIS’ target markets, and …

A 2/3-Scale XTI TriFan 600 Hovers Successfully

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XTI’s TriFan 600 recently flew as a TriFan 665, for the 65-percent test concept vehicle.  There are good reasons for a first flight on this reduced scale, including being able to use smaller motors and batteries, less material, and possibly simplified systems. On May 8, 2019, XTI Aircraft announced that they had successfully completed the first test flights of its 65% scale prototype of the TriFan 600 VTOL aircraft:  The 2/3 concept machine, built on the local Experimental Aircraft Association’s turf, elicits some wonder because none of the chapter’s recent newsletters or Facebook posts mentioned that this project was underway.  Having worked in a design/build architectural-engineering firm, your editor knows all too well what the phrase “confidential client” means.  Chapter 512, knowing the TriFan was on the field, held that confidentiality well.  Only XTI itself made any public pronouncements about the project. According to Transport UP, “During testing early this month, the 65% scale prototype of the TriFan 600  completed multiple takeoffs, hover, …

BlackBird Air, Bye Aerospace Add to eFlyer Sales

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BlackBird Air, Inc., an on-demand flight service operating out of San Carlos, California, has announced it intends to buy 100 eFlyer 4s and 10 eFlyer 2s from Bye Aerospace.  These will augment the firm’s existing fleet of Cirrus SR22s and Pilatus PC12s in providing service to its customers. As the San Francisco Chronicle explains, BlackBird has been called “the Uber of air travel,” an app-driven service that enables flights to cities like Burbank, Palm Springs and Las Vegas.  Sarah Feldberg, writing for the Chronicle, runs through the niceties of this different plane rental approach.  “The interface operates like any trip-booking app until you’ve selected your date and destination. Then, BlackBird prompts you to either join an existing flight or create your own by choosing an aircraft and departure time. For $408, you can fly a three-seater [plus pilot], single-engine Cirrus SR22 from Oakland to Tahoe City on May 24, leaving roughly whenever you’d like and arriving an hour later.”  Split …

Bye eFlyer Sales Near 300

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Diane Simard, Director and Senior Vice President at Bye Aerospace, keeps your editor updated on happenings at the maker of what were SunFlyers, and which are now eFlyers.  The rebranding makes sense.   In their press release for the eFlight Expo in Friedrichshafen, Germany on April 11, the company included this explanation.  “George E. Bye, Founder and CEO of Bye Aerospace, said eFlyer more accurately represents the aircraft’s high-tech all-electric propulsion system. ‘We originally thought solar cells would be standard on the airplane’s wings,’ Bye said. ‘However, with eFlyer’s primary markets being flight training and air taxi services, it makes more sense to make the price of the airplane as reasonable as possible.’” Bye Aerospace’s primary market is growing, with orders for 60 eFlyers from OSM Aviation , a training resource for many of the world’s airlines.  This brings the total of eFlyers to almost 300, achieved despite some roadblocks.  In an email to your editor, Bye explained, “In an April 11 email, …

Big Events and Numbers for Bye Aerospace

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Bye Aerospace has four big current projects, with the Sunflyer 2 at the top of the development and sales curve.  Teaming with Siemens, Bye Aerospace is now flying Sunflyer 2 with one of their 57 pound SP70D motors producing a 90 kilowatt peak rating (120 HP), and continuous power up to 70kW (94 HP). Bye anticipates that Sunflyer 2 will be, “the first FAA-certified, practical, all-electric airplane to serve the flight training and general aviation markets.”  George Bye, the company’s founder and CEO has been working with Agency for several years on devising rules for electric aircraft certification. The need for 790,000 new pilots in the next few decades will drive the need for training aircraft.  An aging fleet with an average age of 48 years for the Pipers and Cessnas on flight school tarmacs requires a newer, more modern series of training planes to replace them. Sunflyer’s impressive sales numbers (a recent order from the Aspen Flying Club for …

NASA Freely Shares X57 Lessons

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NASA and several partner firms have been working on the X-57 Maxwell electric propulsion demonstrator for the past several years.  It hasn’t been as easy as it looked at first.  Encouragingly, NASA is sharing some of the hard lessons it has learned in the process, much like Elon Musk sharing many of his patents with the world. One of the hardest lessons involved the multiple battery packs, originally planned to be off-the-shelf units.  A December 2016 test resulted in a thermal runaway, a situation in which one cell that overheats can self-destruct and cause adjacent cells to follow suit.  This, as we’ve seen in Dreamliner incidents, can be dangerous and potentially deadly.  Such fires are exceedingly well reported, with any Tesla incident overwhelming the press, which ignores the 174,000 car fires reported by the National Fire Protection Association in 2015, which resulted in 415 deaths and $1.2 billion in property damage.  Electrified aviation will be even more critically examined if electric …