Pipistrel and Green Motion to develop charging infrastructure for electric aircraft and UAM market

Pip­istrel is to work with elec­tric vehi­cle charg­ing sys­tem devel­op­er Green Motion and cre­ate charg­ing infra­struc­ture for elec­tric air­craft.

The small air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er says the sys­tem will cre­ate ‘a world­wide stan­dard in elec­tric plane charg­ing’, and both firms also plan to cre­ate a net­work of charg­ing sta­tions for the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket.

Ivo Boscarol, Founder and Pres­i­dent of Pip­istrel, said: “To assure a sig­nif­i­cant change to clean­er atmos­phere, wide­spread use of elec­tric air­craft is a must, and we need to spread the net­work of charg­ers to air­ports all over the world. This can­not be achieved by Pip­istrel alone, but with a skilled and dis­tin­guished part­ner as Green Motion, this becomes a real­i­ty.”

In a press release, the new charg­ing solu­tion will be devel­oped using turnkey tech­nol­o­gy and com­bined with a pho­to­volta­ic sys­tem — as solar tech­nolo­gies can help air­ports receive sub­si­dies.

And as both Pip­istrel and Green Motion are mem­bers of SAE Inter­na­tion­al’s AE-7D Air­craft Ener­gy Stor­age and Charg­ing Com­mit­tee, it gives them the abil­i­ty to set up an inter­nal­ly-accept­ed aero­space stan­dard in e‑flight charg­ing.

François Randin, Founder and CEO of Green Motion, added: “Green Motion has worked on elec­tric air­plane and UAM charg­ing solu­tions for over two years. We see the begin­ning of this new mar­ket like we did more than 11 years ago with elec­tric cars.

“After being a pio­neer for elec­tric cars, we are now a trail­blaz­er in elec­tric air­crafts charg­ing too. That is why we are so proud and hon­oured to part­ner with Pip­istrel, a world-renowned air­craft pro­duc­er which has com­ple­men­tary tech­nol­o­gy and mind­set to ours, so we can define the future of elec­tric planes togeth­er.”

With more than 30 years of expe­ri­ence, Pip­istrel has pro­duced more than 2,200 air­craft to-date. It was the first to fly an elec­tric two-seater air­craft in 2007 and win­ner of the NASA Green Flight Chal­lenge in 2011, with the world’s first elec­tric four-seater aero­plane.

The com­pa­ny obtained the first ever type cer­tifi­cate for an elec­tric air­craft — its Velis Elec­tro — from the Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) ear­li­er this year.

Green Motion SA oper­ates its own net­work of charg­ing sta­tions under the “evpass” brand, which has become the most exten­sive Swiss net­work and the lead­ing Euro­pean EV charg­ing hub. The charg­ing sta­tions pro­duced by Green Motion SA are entire­ly designed and engi­neered in Switzer­land. Green Motion’s projects are in coun­tries such as Chi­na, India, Israel and the USA.