Electronics > Power/Renewable Energy/EV's

Heart Aerospace, electric passenger airplanes startup

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Krig:
So I read a news article about this electric aerospace startup in my hometown called Heart Aerospace. On their website they outline their plan, which is to bring a "200km range all-electric 30-passenger aircraft" into service by 2028. This sounded a bit strange to me as I thought electric flight currently was in a very early and experimental stage; a quick googling seems to confirm that the only fully electric aircraft in service today (apart from experimental prototypes) are UAVs and light 1-2 seater trainer planes. Manufacturing large aircraft like these is, from what I can gather, a very big undertaking and not something that a few years old unknown startup could realistically get into - even if we were talking about "simply" building traditional fuel aircraft with pre-made engines. I was unable to find anything of value online about the company, search engines yield only news articles, press releases, and job listings from the company. One article of interest mention an earlier delivery date of "2026" for a different model of aircraft with a smaller capacity - one that has now been replaced by the current model. This seems to clash a bit with their statements in the TC article: "the 2026 launch date is “not just something that we have as a lofty goal that we’d like to parade around on the internet, but it’s what our suppliers are working toward, what our certifying authorities are working toward as well.”"

Oh, and the news article was about their plans for an aircraft factory at a location were getting scrapped. Apparently the market situation means they can't afford to refurbish the landing strip. They claim to have other options, and that they will build their factory elsewhere.

Is it just me being pessimistic or does this smell a bit?

Kim Christensen:
One of our small local "airlines" did a test run with a small seaplane for one of their short 74Km routes in 2019. The main holdup seems to be getting approval to have the electric engine approved by the FAA so they can do commercial flights. It's a different company than Heart, but it wouldn't surprise me if some of the holdups have more to do with regulatory issues than anything else.

dmills:
"When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the plane will be allowed to fly".
With apologies to Howard Hughes, I could not find the exact quote.

Electric aviation has its issues, and probably does not scale up terribly well, but it might have some applications where it works, and someone has got to actually try.

That said, I am not investing.

buta:
ZeroAvia, fuel cell aircrafts from UK, https://www.zeroavia.com/, the reason I have noticed it is its airplane lost power during a flight test, causing a forced landing in 2021.

AMSL, battery aircrafts from OZ, https://www.vertiia.com/, its full scale prototype just completed its tethered hover by remote control in Jan / Feb.

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