European eVTOL leaders and much more (The Allplane Newsletter #168)

There are two new episodes of the podcast!

And the two of them with two giants of the European eVTOL industry:

Daniel Wiegand, co-founder of Lilium, and Michael Cervenka, CTO of Vertical Aerospace, shared details about their respective companies, as both advanced air mobility ventures are approaching the moment of truth in the race against time and cash-burn to get to certification and entry into service!

Sustainable Aviation News

Electric Aviation

I went to Copenhagen to ask the top managers of Nordic Seaplanes and Elfly about their views on the future of electric amphibious aviation. This is the video of what they told me. (Btw, Eric Lithun, founder of Elfly, was once on the podcast too!)

Belgium-based Cosmic Aerospace, a startup designing an electric passenger aircraft, completed the first flight of a small scale prototype (with a wingspan of 2.5m). To learn more about this company, you can also read this piece I wrote for AeroTime some months ago.

EDF, the French electricity giant (which once run the electricity monopoly in France), has invested in Toulouse-based startup AURA AERO. (You can check my profile of this interesting French startup here).

Interesting post by Michael Cervenka (yes, the same one that is on the latest episode of the podcast!) about the recent decision by Rolls-Royce to close down its electric propulsion unit.

Advanced Air Mobility

Textron is preparing to test its Nexus eVTOL in early 2025 at Salina International Airport, Kansas. This is definitely an eVTOL program to watch, which has kept a low public profile throughout, but has the backing of one of the leading executive aviation OEMs.

Toyota is investing another $500M in Joby, bringing the total to over $800M.

Hard to believe, but apparently Germany didn’t have a native industrial drone until now!

Beta Technologies made a video showing how the passenger version of the ALIA is taking shape.

Hydrogen Aviation

There’s a new wing-in-ground vehicle project in the US, this one is called Sea Cheetah and unlike REGENT (check out our podcast episode about it!) this one is not fully electric but uses hydrogen-electric propulsion.

Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)

Brazil approved its “Fuel of the Future Law”, which covers different types of biofuels. As far as SAF is concerned, it sets mandates for domestic flights, starting with 1% in 2027 and going up to 10% in 2037.

Swiss synthetic-solar SAF producer Synhelion has signed an agreement to supply private aviation manufacturer Pilatus. Btw, you can check the podcast we did with Synhelion here.