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LuftCar plans to develop hydrogen fuel cell battery hybrid propulsion for AAM

Luft­Car plans to devel­op Hydrob, a hydro­gen fuel cell bat­tery hybrid propul­sion sys­tem with ver­ti­cal thrust to lift up to 8500 lb gross vehi­cle weight and to cov­er dis­tances up to 500 miles.

Luft­Car will act as sys­tems inte­gra­tor to devel­op the propul­sion sys­tem in the US, which will have high ener­gy den­si­ty and high pow­er bat­tery den­si­ty, in part­ner­ship with Bosch Avi­a­tion and oth­er auto­mo­tive fuel cell com­pa­nies.

Luft­Car has decades of expe­ri­ence of build­ing fuel cell sys­tems and air­craft frames under Luft­Car founder and CEO Santh Sathya, who had played a crit­i­cal tech­ni­cal role in build­ing 300 hydro­gen fuel cell cars for Ford Motor Com­pa­ny.

Sathya says that Luft­Car is inno­vat­ing a sys­tem to con­vert an auto­mo­tive fuel cell pow­er­train to avi­a­tion grade. Hydrob is expect­ed to be light­weight and com­pact and can be pack­aged with­in air­frames. The propul­sion sys­tem also can work with onboard liq­uid or gas hydro­gen.

Luft­Car plans to devel­op and sell Hydrob to oth­er advanced air mobil­i­ty or eVTOL OEMs. Hydrob will cre­ate demand for hydro­gen and will accel­er­ate the adop­tion of hydro­gen as a major fuel car­ri­er for the grow­ing region­al air mobil­i­ty indus­try.

The com­pa­ny also plans to build hydro­gen refu­el­ing infra­struc­ture to cre­ate an ecosys­tem for Luft­Cars to oper­ate from city to city. Last week, the US announced that it had opened appli­ca­tions for a $7 bil­lion pro­gram to cre­ate region­al clean hydro­gen hubs.

Sathya com­ment­ed: “We are delight­ed that the $7 bil­lion hydro­gen hub grants are offi­cial now and as part of our con­tri­bu­tion to the hydro­gen econ­o­my, we aim to build hydro­gen refu­el­ing Luft­Pad ver­ti­ports as tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tors.

“In addi­tion to build­ing the Luft­Cars and the Hydrobs, these Luft­Pads will also serve road trans­port and util­i­ty lev­el stor­age in addi­tion to air mobil­i­ty.”

In ear­ly August, Luft­Car part­nered with Neu­ro­botx to launch eVTOL dock­ing and undock­ing for com­mer­cial, mil­i­tary and health­care appli­ca­tions out of Orlan­do, Flori­da, hav­ing recent­ly signed with BOSCH to devel­op eVTOL hydro­gen fuel cell com­po­nents.

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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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