Take Heart!  United We Fly!

Dean Sigler Announcements, Batteries, Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Heart Aerospace, on the airport at Gothenburg Airport in southern Sweden, wants to bring inexpensive, four-motor electric flight to the masses.  With $35 million (29.4 million euros) in recently acquired backing, the small team at Heart is working toward making a 19-passenger, four-motor airliner a reality.  Their ES-19 is a single-aisle design with eight-rows of single seats and three-seat row at the cabin’s rear. Those 19 seats are a selling point, with United Airlines signing purchase contracts for 100 of the $ 9 million machines.  Mesa Airlines follows suit for another 100 and Finnair, Finland’s national airline, has expressed interest in another 20.  Funding from Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and other investors totals over $35 million.  For a niche market, the possibilities are expansive, with many small airlines flying short routes ready for such a craft. Heart sees the 19-seat market as promising, since few 19-seat commuter liners exist anymore.  Part of that is economic, with small turboprops being …

Going Big and Bigger with Hydrogen

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Fuel Cells, GFC, Hydrogen Fuel, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Two companies promoting hydrogen power for aircraft are upsizing their aspirations, with aircraft  hauling four to up to 40 passengers.  Both have ambitious timelines. ZeroAvia, operating in Hollister, California and Cirencester, England has been flying a Piper Malibu demonstrator, but anticipates flying a 10 to 20 passenger Dornier by 2024.  It would expand that to a 50-passenger craft by 2026.  H2Fly in Germany has been flying their Pipistrel-designed HY4 for several years and through six generations. The firm looks forward to taking incremental steps toward a 40-passenger regional airliner by 2030. ZeroAvia ZeroAvia reports on troubling trends in aviation’s contribution to greenhouse gases, but follows with a possible solution.  According to their web site, aviation accounts for over 12 percent of total transportation emissions, and may double that by 2050.  High altitude contrails mean aviation emissions have two to four times the effect of ground source emissions.  Regulators want drastic changes.  The European Union mandates a one quarter the CO2 …

ZeroAvia Gains Backing at High Levels

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Fuel Cells, Hydrogen Fuel, Sustainable Aviation 1 Comment

“Cannot be more proud and humbled to be a part of this stellar team!”  That’s power system developer Gabriel DeVault’s response to ZeroAvia’s Chief Financial Officer Katya Akulinicheva’s enthusiastic endorsement of Bloomberg LP’s news.  She listed the investors taking an active interest in ZeroAvia, including Ecosystem Integrity Fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the Amazon Climate Pledge Fund, Horizons Ventures, Shell Ventures and Summa Equity. Already benefiting from a $16.3 million grant from Innovate UK, Aerospace Technology Institute and Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), ZeroAvia will be able to push forward on plans to create a 19-seat hydrogen-powered commuter liner. According to Bloomberg, “ZeroAvia aims to demonstrate that it can fly a plane 500 miles (804 kilometers) with as many as 20 seats by 2023. It wants to scale up to 1,000 miles with over 100 seats by 2030.” With individuals such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos taking an interest, an aviation blog now feels a little like …