Jaunt Air Mobility supplied contract to develop Extreme Fast Charging (XFC) solutions for electric aircraft

Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty has been award­ed a Small Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Trans­fer (STTR) con­tract by the U.S. Air Force Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry (AFRL), to devel­op Extreme Fast Charg­ing (XFC) solu­tions for the devel­op­ment of elec­tric air­craft for large scale pro­duc­tion and fleet man­age­ment.  

The AFRL leads the dis­cov­ery, devel­op­ment, and deliv­ery of warfight­ing tech­nolo­gies for the coun­try’s air, space, and cyber­space forces. The con­tract is to devel­op a com­mer­cial XFC solu­tion that inte­grates XFC pow­er elec­tron­ics, bat­tery cool­ing, and smart com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the vehi­cle and bat­tery sys­tem to sup­port both on-vehi­cle charg­ing and depot-lev­el charg­ing needs.

Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty will be work­ing with BAE Sys­tems and Bing­ham­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in the state of New York.

Mar­tin Peryea, CEO of Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty, said: “The advent of elec­tric avi­a­tion cre­ates a need for the devel­op­ment of extreme fast charg­ing solu­tions to enable the next gen­er­a­tion of elec­tric avi­a­tion.

“As an OEM in the design and devel­op­ment of eVTOL air­craft, we are pleased to be work­ing with BAE Sys­tems and Bing­ham­ton Uni­ver­si­ty on this effort. No stan­dard­ised aero­space charg­er solu­tions are wide­ly avail­able.”

As the plat­form provider, Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty pro­vides the plat­form and fleet require­ments while lever­ag­ing BAE Sys­tems’ expe­ri­ence in inte­grat­ing and field­ing over 14,000 high-pow­er, high-volt­age bat­tery sys­tems and pow­er elec­tron­ics solu­tions to com­mer­cialise the XFC solu­tion.

The solu­tion also lever­ages Bing­ham­ton University’s XFC research in high-pow­er, high-volt­age charg­ing solu­tions with advance­ments to sup­port the broad range of plat­form volt­age, secu­ri­ty, and safe­ty require­ments for avi­a­tion.

Small Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Trans­fer (STTR) pro­grams are high­ly com­pet­i­tive pro­grams that encour­age domes­tic small busi­ness­es to engage in Fed­er­al Research/Research and Devel­op­ment (R/R&D) with the poten­tial for com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion.

Through a com­pet­i­tive awards-based pro­gram, STTR enables small busi­ness­es to explore their tech­no­log­i­cal poten­tial and pro­vide the incen­tive to prof­it from its com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion.

Cen­tral to the STTR pro­gram is the part­ner­ship between small busi­ness­es and non-prof­it research insti­tu­tions. STTR is to bridge the gap between basic sci­ence and the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of result­ing inno­va­tions.

Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing its Jaunt Jour­ney eVTOL air­craft which uses ROSA^TM tech­nol­o­gy. Described as a Reduced Oper­at­ing Speed Air­craft, it com­bines the per­for­mance of an air­plane with the ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing effi­cien­cy of a heli­copter. Jaunt has said that its air­craft is also 100 times qui­eter than con­ven­tion­al heli­copters.

It’s pro­ject­ed roadmap will begin with first pre-pro­duc­tion flights in 2023, which will also be the year the com­pa­ny starts its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process. Low-rate pro­duc­tion will then com­mence in 2025, with full-rate pro­duc­tion start­ing a year lat­er — and at the same time cer­ti­fi­ca­tion will be com­plete.