Pipistrel and Lobo Leasing sign partnership which includes order for 15 Nuuva V300 hybrid VTOL aircraft

Lobo Leas­ing have signed a part­ner­ship with Pip­istrel and placed an order for 15 Nuu­va V300 hVTOL air­craft.

The agree­ment con­firms Lobo Leas­ing and Pipistrel’s com­mit­ment to devel­op­ing new ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing, envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, and sus­tain­able air trans­porta­tion.

The NUUVA V300 is an opti­mal hVTOL UAV for mid­dle mile logis­tics with a three cubic meter capac­i­ty, and under favor­able flight con­di­tions, it can car­ry 460 kg  for up to 400 km. 

It is designed to be ten times more eco­nom­i­cal than today’s heli­copters, requires no run­ways, and brings enhanced safe­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty using Pipistrel’s type-cer­ti­fied elec­tric engines. 

As part of the agree­ment, Lobo leas­ing and Pip­istrel will deliv­er cus­tomer-dri­ven bespoke leas­ing solu­tions to enhance the deploy­ment of the Nuu­va V300 air­craft in dif­fer­ent types of mis­sions.

Bryan Wood, Head of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment for spe­cial prod­ucts at Pip­istrel, said: “The Lobo’s plat­form struc­ture, smart arrange­ment of financ­ing solu­tions, and exten­sive knowl­edge of the glob­al ver­ti­cal lift mar­ket add key ele­ments to this new ecosys­tem.

“It pro­vides OEMs with a strate­gic dif­fer­en­tial to meet air­craft oper­a­tor needs and fos­ter the intro­duc­tion, growth and con­sol­i­da­tion of the hVTOL tech­nol­o­gy glob­al­ly.”

Gus­ta­vo Semer­aro, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent Busi­ness Devel­op­ment at Lobo, said: “We are proud to be part of this moment in the ver­ti­cal lift indus­try evo­lu­tion. 

“The Pip­istrel inno­v­a­tive approach asso­ci­at­ed with its sol­id posi­tion as an expe­ri­enced and suc­cess­ful long-term estab­lished OEM places the Nuu­va V300 in a posi­tion to rev­o­lu­tionise the exist­ing sys­tems of car­go deliv­ery and the seg­ment of mid­dle-mile logis­tics, as well as bring­ing plen­ty of new capa­bil­i­ties to mis­sion-crit­i­cal roles like remote oper­a­tions and aer­i­al sup­port to human­i­tar­i­an cam­paigns.”

Last month, Tex­tron, home to the Cess­na, Beechcraft and Bell avi­a­tion brands, con­firmed an agree­ment to pur­chase Pip­istrel. Tex­tron also plans to form a new busi­ness seg­ment called Tex­tron eAv­i­a­tion, which will focus on the devel­op­ment of sus­tain­able air­craft.

Back in Jan­u­ary 2021, Pip­istrel announced a part­ner­ship with Green Aerolease to help accel­er­ate the tran­si­tion of elec­tric avi­a­tion in France and oth­er coun­tries across Europe, start­ing with an order for 50 of Pipistrel’s Velis Elec­tro air­craft.

Work­ing with the French Fed­er­a­tion of Aero­nau­tics, the air­craft will be offered for rent to pilot schools and clubs for the new gen­er­a­tion of pilot train­ing.