Dufour Aerospace selects Air Energy for battery modules

Air Ener­gy has been select­ed as a sup­pli­er for the smart bat­tery packs for the hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem of the Dufour Aero­space uncrewed tilt-wing air­craft Aero2. Air Ener­gy will design the bat­tery hous­ing, the mechan­i­cal and elec­tri­cal con­nec­tion of the bat­tery packs and the bat­tery man­age­ment sys­tem for the Aero2.

Jas­mine Kent, Co-founder and CTO of Dufour Aero­space said: “Aero2 is a hybrid VTOL air­craft, so bat­ter­ies are a crit­i­cal com­po­nent, and it was very impor­tant to us that we find the right part­ner.

“Air Ener­gy has an out­stand­ing track record of sup­ply­ing high per­for­mance bat­tery sys­tems for light air­craft. Each mod­ule has its own bat­tery man­age­ment sys­tem (BMS), enabling in-flight charg­ing of the bat­ter­ies, and allow­ing us to approach the land­ing zone with a full charge and max­i­mum per­for­mance.

“It also enables rapid touch-and-go ground turn­around, with­out hav­ing to wait between flights for recharg­ing. We are excit­ed to part­ner with Air Ener­gy on the sup­ply of these crit­i­cal pow­er mod­ules for our first pro­duc­tion air­craft.”

Christoph Schäper, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at Air Ener­gy, added: “We strong­ly believe in the con­cept of the envi­sioned Aero2 drone and look for­ward to con­tribut­ing to its suc­cess in the com­ing years.

“With­in the past decade, Air Ener­gy has focussed increas­ing­ly on devel­op­ing and pro­duc­ing drone bat­ter­ies. By the end of 2023, we will have pro­duced over 1500 bat­ter­ies, all of them pro­tect­ed by BMS sys­tems devel­oped in house. It is impor­tant for us to part­ner with the most dynam­ic and inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies, and our coop­er­a­tion with Dufour Aero­space will be a per­fect match.”

Air Ener­gy was found­ed in 1992 to devel­op a self-launch­ing elec­tric Sailplane. Since2003, it has devel­oped and pro­duced smart bat­tery sys­tems based on Li-Ion cells. Its bat­ter­ies have been devel­oped for auto­mo­tive pro­to­typ­ing, for exam­ple BMW con­cept cars, exper­i­men­tal air­crafts like Solar Impulse, under­wa­ter and air­borne drones and VTOL/STOL air­craft.

The Air Ener­gy team works on the mechan­i­cal design, elec­tron­ics and soft­ware of the bat­tery. Its ser­vice port­fo­lio extends from design and real­i­sa­tion of pro­to­types, ini­tial sam­pling and com­mis­sion­ing to the pro­duc­tion of high qual­i­ty series prod­ucts.

Last month, Dufour Aero­space select­ed Ger­man electro­mechan­i­cal actu­a­tor man­u­fac­tur­er Volz Ser­vos as sup­pli­er for the Aero2.

Dufour Aero­space selects Volz Ser­vos as part­ner for Aero2