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Pipistrel presents new unmanned eVTOL aircraft for air cargo market

Pip­istrel Air­craft is now accept­ing orders for its Nuu­va series of air car­go eVTOL air­craft, which includes the flag­ship V300 mod­el and small­er V20.

The Sloven­ian man­u­fac­tur­er says it aims to dis­rupt aer­i­al car­go trans­porta­tion by com­mer­cial­is­ing the use of eVTOL air­craft, with the Nuu­va fam­i­ly com­bin­ing ‘the best of both aero­plane and heli­copter air car­go trans­porta­tion prin­ci­ples’.

The V300 is planned to be in ser­vice for the sec­ond half of 2023, while the V20 — designed to be a light­weight car­go couri­er — can car­ry pay­loads of up to 20kg and is expect­ed to be deliv­ered to cus­tomers as ear­ly as 2021.

The V300 can be cus­tomised for a wide range of mis­sions — so oper­a­tors pri­ori­tis­ing longer dis­tances can trade-off air­craft’s pay­load capac­i­ty and anti-ice capa­bil­i­ties for fuel.

This will allow them to trans­port a 50kg pay­load as far as 2,500km — with­out com­pro­mis­ing the abil­i­ty to take-off and land ver­ti­cal­ly from alti­tudes as high as 8,000ft. At low­er take-off alti­tudes and with short­er mis­sion require­ments, the Nuu­va V300’s pay­load can be increased to up to 460kg —  beat­ing the cov­et­ed 1,000 lb thresh­old.

Cur­rent­ly, pre­cious car­go is deliv­ered to loca­tions around the world with heli­copters, which are excel­lent for hov­er­ing but much less effi­cient in cruise flight, as they rely sole­ly on their rotor(s) to pro­vide the nec­es­sary lift.

Their com­plex flight mechan­ics also results in a high num­ber of mov­ing parts, requir­ing fre­quent main­te­nance and inspec­tion, fur­ther increas­ing the costs of oper­a­tion.

Ivo Boscarol, Pip­istrel Air­craft’s Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, said: “The miss­ing link in mid­dle-size-and-weight car­go trans­porta­tion pre­vents fast and effi­cient deliv­ery. Often the road con­nec­tions to remote loca­tions are very poor or non-exis­tent, so des­ti­na­tions such as small islands, moun­tain­ous areas, deserts, dense­ly forest­ed places etc. are extreme­ly hard to reach for car­go trans­port.

“Imag­ine that you are liv­ing on one of the almost 15,000 Indone­sian islands where less than 50 peo­ple are liv­ing, and you want to order a wash­ing machine. There is no reg­u­lar fer­ry line, no aer­i­al con­nec­tion, so you must sim­ply take your own boat, go pick it up and bring it home, many miles across the unpre­dictable sea. Heli­copters are sim­ply too expen­sive, too noisy, too dan­ger­ous and too pol­lut­ing for the atmos­phere.”

The Nuu­va V300 takes-off and lands using eight inde­pen­dent bat­tery-pow­ered Pip­istrel E‑811 elec­tric engines, already Type Cer­ti­fied. The whole sys­tem is safe­guard­ed by the inte­grat­ed health self‑monitoring sys­tem that alerts of any poten­tial mal­func­tion even before it occurs, increas­ing the reli­a­bil­i­ty and safe­ty.

A depend­able and proven inter­nal com­bus­tion engine in the aft fuse­lage pow­ers the air­craft in cruise flight, offer­ing unbeat­able fuel econ­o­my and low main­te­nance costs. A unique tan­dem-wing con­fig­u­ra­tion with fly-by-wire con­trol sur­faces boosts the aero­dy­nam­ic effi­cien­cy and reduces the land­ing foot­print of the vehi­cle, while assur­ing a wide cen­tre-of-grav­i­ty mar­gin.

The large car­go com­part­ment accepts up to 3 Euro-pal­lets (EPAL) that can be eas­i­ly loaded with a reg­u­lar fork­lift. The air­craft then flies a pre­loaded flight plan ful­ly autonomous­ly, con­trolled by a high­ly reli­able dig­i­tal flight con­trol sys­tem. Con­tin­u­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion allows the ground oper­a­tor, who man­ages the vehi­cle with sim­ple mouse-clicks, to have ulti­mate con­trol in case of changes or can­cel­la­tion of the flight.

Nuu­va V300’s bat­ter­ies can be charged by sim­ply plug­ging-in to a Sky­ChargeTM by Pip­istrel and Green Motion charg­ing sta­tion. The two com­pa­nies announced a part­ner­ship ear­li­er this month.

Boscarol added: “Three EURO-pal­lets of car­go is the size which replaces small truck or a large car­go van. This is the miss­ing link between large car­go air­craft and the small last-mile-deliv­ery and this is what we are offer­ing.

“The 300km range to be reached in one hour and a half is a very big ben­e­fit also for the deliv­ery of per­ish­able goods such as fresh veg­eta­bles or meat prod­ucts, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and frozen food. In com­bi­na­tion with the NUUVA V20, this deliv­ery sys­tem is capa­ble of reach­ing almost every park­ing place, foot­ball field or an ordi­nary grass field in any urban area in the world and land there.”

For more infor­ma­tion about the air­craft, vis­it https://www.pipistrel-aircraft.com/aircraft/nuuva-v300/

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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