Electrified Aviation Study
October 27th, 2024, Kyle Hodgson
An initial survey of electrified aviation after roughly 30 days of study between September and October 2024.
Electrified aviation is taking off
- During our study period, between 5 and 35 flights each day are being powered entirely by battery electric powertrains
- Most of these are CTOL (conventional take off and landing) - traditional “airplanes”, a wing, tail, and a propeller
- Some of these are “EVTOL” - electric vertical take off and landing
- EVTOL are fewer, but that number is growing
FAA’s recent news accompanies EVTOL flights
October 22, 2024 the FAA published its final rule for “powered lift” aircraft, which encompasses EVTOL aircraft such as Joby, Archer, and Beta.
If you remove Pipistrel training flights from the graph, you can more easily see that both Beta and Joby are fairly actively flying their EVTOL aircraft, likely as part of certification testing.
What is Joby doing?
Joby frequently takes off from and then lands at Marina Municipal airport south of San Francisco.
Flights are often just a few minutes long, and appear to be Joby testing one of their own aircraft.
| reg | origin | duration | date |
|---|---|---|---|
| N542JX | KOAR | 0:00:00 | 2024-10-01 |
| N542JX | KOAR | 0:24:00 | 2024-10-01 |
| N542JX | KOAR | 0:19:00 | 2024-10-01 |
| N542JX | KOAR | 1:00:00 | 2024-10-02 |
| N542JX | KOAR | 0:11:00 | 2024-10-02 |
| N541JX | KOAR | 0:11:00 | 2024-10-15 |
| N541JX | KOAR | 0:18:00 | 2024-10-17 |
| N541JX | KOAR | 0:17:00 | 2024-10-22 |
| N541JX | KOAR | 0:18:00 | 2024-10-23 |
| N541JX | KOAR | 0:07:00 | 2024-10-24 |
| N541JX | KOAR | 0:17:00 | 2024-10-24 |
| N541JX | KOAR | 0:17:00 | 2024-10-25 |
Joby charging
Joby has led with innovation in charging - they’ve created a new charging standard, GEACS
- Includes battery coolant in addition to electricity and data
- Charge two battery packs at once with one plug
- Ergonomics: handle allows easy insertion for wing mounted batteries of heavy cables
Presumably, including battery coolant in the charging loop saves weight by cooling the battery with ground equipment. It’s unclear if the aircraft is limited to air cooling during flight.
Joby is promoting this as a global standard.
What is Beta doing?
Mostly, flights look like testing, for instance the flight to the right that takes off from Burlington Vermont, flies in loops, and often drops altitude only to climb again.
Occasionally Beta flies its Alia 250 aircraft between Burlington and Montreal Canada, where they have an engineering facility.
Beta charging network
Beta has also innovated in charging, by building a charging network
- It’s network originally extended from Vermont to Bentonville Arkansas
- It’s expanding in to the Southern USA and in to California
- These chargers are open to the public today
Beta’s aircraft makes use of high powered commodity CCS DC fast chargers
Beta charging equipment
Beta is now building bespoke, aviation friendly CCS chargers.
They are lower to the ground with longer cables to more easily work with aircraft than previous models, which were essentially automotive CCS chargers.
Archer has announced a partnership with Beta to make use of Beta’s charging network, though details are limited.
What about Archer?
While its difficult to prove a negative, this study doesn’t see similar evidence of Archer testing flights. This study begins in mid September to late October, so its possible things like their widely announced transition flight happened before then. They have made some social media appearances and other announcements such as the charging partnership with Beta.
Global Training Market
Training is the fastest growing use case
Pipistrel aviation make two seat trainers
- Range is sufficient for a one hour training session
- The cost of training can be much lower given the cost of electricity vs the cost of aviation fuel
- Aircraft are comparable in cost and configuration to the Cessna 172
- Textron, who owns Cessna, acquired Pipistrel in 2022.
Training is spreading globally
Pipistrel’s Velis Electro is the most popular model, in heavy use in Europe.
It’s beginning to also show up in the United States, Australia and New Zealand.
BRM Aero’s Bristell Energic is also beginning to make an appearance with activity that looks more like GA than training, but could be certification testing.
