Battery Maker H55 Gains Support From Canada Economic Development

Swiss-based bat­tery mak­er H55 announced this week, it has gained sup­port from the Cana­da Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment (CED) for Que­bec Regions in the devel­op­ment of its Cana­di­an sub­sidiary, reports a press release.

This assis­tance will devel­op H55’s glob­al expan­sion, “posi­tion­ing the com­pa­ny to meet the increas­ing demand for its clean avi­a­tion appli­ca­tions in the North Amer­i­can mar­ket,” says the release. H55’s pres­ence in Cana­da will include cus­tomer tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment, man­u­fac­tur­ing and cus­tomer sup­port.

H55s Bat­tery Mod­ule (cred­it: H55)

The company’s sub­sidiary is locat­ed in the greater Mon­tre­al area, and will serve and work along­side its exist­ing cus­tomer base includ­ing Pratt & Whit­ney Cana­da and Har­bour Air. A man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty is in the process of being secured, with the first bat­tery packs pro­duc­tion begin­ning next year.

The release con­tin­ues, “H55s strengths lie in devel­op­ing propul­sion and ener­gy solu­tions which are mod­u­lar, light­weight and cer­ti­fi­able. The team has a proven abil­i­ty in devel­op­ing, pro­duc­ing, inte­grat­ing, and flight-test­ing elec­tric propul­sion sys­tems, includ­ing Solar Impulse, the first solar-pow­ered elec­tric air­plane to fly around the world.”

H55’s aims is to devel­op elec­tric propul­sion solu­tions to enable the avi­a­tion indus­try to reach net zero CO2 by 2050. Ini­tial­ly, the aim is to pro­mote the devel­op­ment and adop­tion of clean mobil­i­ty. The pro­gram is intend­ed to help the Cana­di­an aero­space sec­tor emerge from the pan­dem­ic with the capac­i­ty to com­pete on the glob­al stage, with three spe­cif­ic objec­tives:-

: To facil­i­tate envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able prac­tices.

: To improve pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

: To strength­en com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion while fur­ther­ing inte­gra­tion into region­al and glob­al sup­ply chains.

Pratt & Whit­ney Raytheon Part­ner­ship (cred­it: Raytheon Tech­nolo­gies)

André Borschberg, H55’s co-Founder and Exec­u­tive Chair­man com­ment­ed, “Being present in Cana­da is a first step in build­ing out our North Amer­i­ca pres­ence. There is a strate­gic fit with the coun­try giv­en its com­mit­ment to sus­tain­able avi­a­tion. CED’s com­mit­ment in sup­port­ing H55 shows a shared vision in mak­ing air trans­porta­tion qui­et, clean, and afford­able.”

Pas­cale St-Onge, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Brome–Missisquoi and Min­is­ter of Sport and Min­is­ter respon­si­ble for CED, added, “The gov­ern­ment is mak­ing strate­gic invest­ments in clean tech­nolo­gies, a pri­or­i­ty in our eco­nom­ic recov­ery plan by lever­ag­ing inno­v­a­tive projects such as this one, to boost the devel­op­ment and adop­tion of sus­tain­able propul­sion in the aero­nau­tics sec­tor.”

H55 has been active in Cana­da for two years work­ing with such com­pa­nies as Pratt & Whit­ney (P&WC) who select­ed the bat­tery mak­er in 2022 to pro­vide pow­er sys­tems for the company’s region­al hybrid-elec­tric flight demon­stra­tor. This was fol­lowed by an invest­ment by RTX Ven­tures, the ven­ture cap­i­tal arm of Raytheon Tech­nolo­gies, the par­ent com­pa­ny of P&WC.

H55 also announced in 2021 a part­ner­ship with Har­bour Air, North America’s largest sea­plane oper­a­tor, to pro­duce high­ly effi­cient bat­tery packs for the first elec­tric Beaver (eBeaver) com­muter air­plane through a sup­ple­men­tal type cer­tifi­cate (STC) pro­gram.

Mean­while, H55 is com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing CAE with the ener­gy stor­age and man­age­ment sys­tem for its Piper Archer elec­tric air­craft mod­i­fi­ca­tion pro­gram. H55 is design­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing the air­craft bat­tery sys­tem to sup­port CAE’s effort to pro­duce a Piper Archer con­ver­sion kit, to be com­mer­cial­ly avail­able to oth­er oper­a­tors.

CAE Part­ner­ship (Gre­go­ry Blatt, H55 Co-Founder, Chief of Sales, Mar­ket­ing and Busi­ness Devel­op­ment — far right)

H55 has more than 20 years of expe­ri­ence, and has built and flown 4 elec­tric planes, break­ing 14 world records in dis­tance, alti­tude and dura­tion. The com­pa­ny is the first and only one with a cer­ti­fied design and pro­duc­tion organ­i­sa­tion (EASA/FOCA). H55’s mod­u­lar sys­tem has proven itself in real flight con­di­tions and is now being inte­grat­ed in dif­fer­ent types of air­craft con­fig­u­ra­tions.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.h55.ch/

https://ced.canada.ca/en/ced-home/

(Top image: cred­it — H55)