Electrify everything trend can break the neck of electric aviation
👋 I’m Kolin, based in the lovely city of Hamburg, with a passion for the disruptive forces shaking up aviation and aerospace. With the AeroTechPulse, I share a curation of the 🔥 hottest 🔥 news trends and developments in aviation and aerospace. The AeroTechPulse is distributed biweekly.
🚀 Opinion.
The electrify everything trend can be catastrophic for electric aviation. The green energy transition is a hot topic right now, and for good reason. The world is waking up to the fact that we need to find cleaner, more sustainable ways to power our lives, and move more sustainably from A to B. Aviation has also jumped on the "electrify everything" trend aiming to operate electric VTOLs or CTOLs.
Electricity prices have been on the rise as of late due to many reasons. This rise in prices puts electric aviation, especially the many projects, at risk, as the business case simply does not fly any longer for operators. And here we haven't even touched upon the supply side.
Generally, we need to get used to the high prices for electricity and that the price will increase even further over the coming years and decades. Hence, the AAM ecosystem needs to address this challenge and work on an attractive business case for operators if the industry wants AAM to take off to the masses.
🛫 Driving the Conversation. The Top Reads.
Joby ended the fourth quarter of 2022 with $1.1 billion in cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, and investments in marketable securities. 2023 net cash used is expected to range from $360 to $380 million.
Loganair CEO Jonathan Hinkles believes hydrogen propulsion is likely to mature quicker than electric aviation, despite his airline operating short-sector lengths tipped most likely to benefit from electric-aircraft technologies. He believes the problem is the physics of getting enough battery power onto the aircraft to be able to work with it, while Conor McCarthy does not believe battery technologies will mature quickly enough to give the power-to-weight ratio needed for commercial regional flying. Air Greenland CEO Jacob Nitter Sørensen also said he is unlikely to take up on the first generation of electric aircraft, but these projects give hope for the future of the industry.
ARPA-E is launching Phase 2 of two programs to develop technologies that could enable the electrification of propulsion systems for a future Boeing 737-class airliner. Reeach and Ascend have entered their two-year second phases with the goal of demonstrating technologies at significant scale. Reeach has two main technology paths: a hybrid powerplant combining a solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC) with a gas turbine and a gas turbine with heat recovery. Hydrogen-reheated gas turbines can increase efficiency by recovering exergy via heat exchangers in the turbine exhaust, but the heat exchanger weight and pressure drop must be managed. Reeach and Ascend are intended to mature electrified propulsion technologies to readiness levels of 4-5, but before then, the agency hopes the technologies could find applications in uncrewed air vehicles, urban air taxis and regional aircraft.
LH2 could contribute to aviation's 2050 climate goals but with performance penalties when compared to Jet A-powered aircraft. LH2-powered aircraft have a shorter range than fossil-fuel aircraft, but they could transport 165 passengers up to 3,400 km and turboprop aircraft could transport 70 passengers up to 1,400 km. They could service one-third of all passenger aviation traffic, as measured by revenue passenger kilometers (RPKs). Fuel costs will be higher than Jet A-fueled aircraft, but cheaper than "blue" LH2 generated from fossil fuels with carbon sequestration or synthetic e-kerosene.
ARPA-E has announced up to $10 million in funding to develop an Aviation Contrail Predictive System capable of informing pilots and ground controllers in real time whether an aircraft is likely to produce persistent contrails. Pre-Trails is a concept to equip the aircraft to sense when it is producing persistent contrails that could contribute to radiative forcing. Machine-learning methods will need to be developed to explore large datasets and more complex correlations to produce reasonably accurate results.
Bigger airlines are being favoured by sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) providers, according to one cargo airline boss. Astral Aviation founder and chief executive Sanjeev Gadhia said smaller carriers interested in investing in SAF are "at the bottom of the food chain". He noted that cost is also a barrier to usage, but it isn't an insurmountable obstacle. A number of big name air cargo stakeholders have invested in SAF recently, such as DHL Express, Kuehne+Nagel, Nippon Cargo Airlines, Liege Airport and Brussels airport.
Alaska Airlines has been using Airspace Intelligence's Flyways software to reduce delays and missed connections, reduce fuel usage and carbon emissions, and contribute to its environmental sustainability goal. Airspace Intelligence is reinventing the dispatching process by using artificial intelligence to predict the future movements of other vehicles. Flyways' machine-learning approach improves itself by recognizing patterns between input data and previous decisions, presenting options that are different from what dispatchers might otherwise consider. Flyways learns from human dispatchers' decisions and evolves, reducing carbon emissions by 2.7 minutes per flight. Alaska Airlines turned to AI to reduce its impact on climate change, but it is not a huge reduction in fuel burn.
United Airlines and five corporate partners are launching a venture capital fund to invest in startup firms and technology developing and expanding the availability of sustainable aviation fuel, commonly referred to as SAF. The fund will start with $100 million invested by United Airlines, Air Canada, Boeing, GE Aerospace, JPMorgan Chase and Honeywell, and customers can donate to the fund in exchange for 500 United MileagePlus frequent flyer miles. United is also adding a new feature to its website and app that shows customers the estimated carbon footprint of a particular flight. If all 152 million passengers who flew the airline in 2022 donated $3.50 to the fund, it would be enough money to design and build an SAF refinery capable of producing up to 40 million gallons of SAF every year.
Airbus NextGen is powered by eight propellers and 16 electrical power units, with dual systems for redundancy, and will carry one pilot with three passengers in a banked seat at the rear of the cabin. Airbus UAM is developing the CityAirbus NextGen demonstrator and building an ecosystem to test the UAM industry. Airbus UAM is selecting vertiports for eVTOLs, considering routes, missions, and public acceptability. Airbus UAM is taking a "step by step" approach to development, focusing on medical applications, connecting remote communities, and eco-tourism.
AutoFlight has achieved the world's longest eVTOL flight during testing. The 155 mile (250km) unmanned flight took place last week at AutoFlight's eVTOL testing facility on a single charge of the aircraft's lithium-ion batteries.
🤑 [VC] Transactions, Partnerships, and Other Deals & Figures.
FUNDING
AeroCloud raised $12.6 million to develop its air management platform
Fortem Technologies raised $17.8 million to develop its airspace software
AirSpeeder raised $3 million to develop its VTOL vehicle
H3X Technologies raised in total $9 million to develop its electric propulsion system
Ptero Dynamics raised $7.5 million to develop its larger VTOL aircraft
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ORDERS
Spright signs LoI for 40 of Blueflight medical and logistics drones
Asian Express Aviation signs LoI for 50 of TCab Tech's eVTOLs
PARTNERSHIPS
HCA Airport enters into a strategic partnership with Copenhagen Helicopter
Birmingham Airport enters into a strategic partnership with ZeroAvia
Skyfly enters into a strategic partnership with Embention
Solithor enters into a strategic partnership with Sonaca
Lilium enters into a strategic partnership with Collins Aerospace
Thales enters into a strategic partnership with Aura Aero
EVENTS
Below are a few upcoming events where I will be speaking. Hit me up if you want to meet!
March 23: Amsterdam Drone Week: "Regional Air Mobility: A New Era of Aviation?"
April 19: eVTOL Insights, London: "Unlocking the eVTOL passenger experience"
April 25: Revolution.Aero, Dublin
May 10: Electric Aircraft Conference, Los Angeles: "What's in it for airline operators? A Look into the Economics".
September 06: Revolution.Aero, San Francisco
September 27: Electric & Hybrid Aerospace Summit, Bremen: "Electric Dreams: Navigating the Economic Viability of Urban and Regional Air Mobility for Airlines"
🦾 Some Fancy Innovations.
Figure 01 is the world's first commercially viable general purpose humanoid robot, designed to address labor shortages and eliminate unsafe and undesirable jobs. Figure is building a humanoid robot that will be fully electric, 1.6 meters tall, weigh 60 kilograms with a 20 kg payload, and run for 5 hours on a charge due to its slim form factor and focus on commercial utility. Figure believes it has a realistic shot at being the first company to commercialize a general-purpose humanoid robot, but it will require significant advancements in technology. Figure is designing a fully electromechanical humanoid with the physical capabilities of a nonexpert human, aiming to reduce unit costs through high-rate volume manufacturing, safety, and artificial intelligence. Figure is developing a humanoid robot with high risk and low chances of success, but is excited about the potential.
🙏 End Note.
I hope you enjoyed Kolin’s AeroTechPulse. The next edition will be published soon, so stay tuned and hungry 😋.
Please connect on LinkedIn and reach out if you have any questions or feedback, or want to discuss the topics.
Cheers,
K
# 🕊️ Live today, love tomorrow 🌍 #
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----- Disclaimer -----
👉 The opinions, ideas, and viewpoints presented do not reflect those of my current employment, nor do the publication format or any individual personal opinion on a subject do so. 🚨
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