Supernal, Hyundai WIA and Mecaer partner on eVTOL landing gear development

Super­nal, Hyundai Motor Group’s Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) com­pa­ny, Hyundai WIA glob­al aero­space parts man­u­fac­tur­er and Mecaer Avi­a­tion Group, a glob­al Ital­ian aero­nau­ti­cal com­pa­ny, announced at the Seoul Air Show this week a part­ner­ship to design and man­u­fac­ture land­ing gear sys­tems for eVTOL vehi­cles.

Hyundai WIA spe­cialis­es in mass man­u­fac­tur­ing and pre­ci­sion machine tools, while Mecaer is expe­ri­enced in design­ing and build­ing aero­space-grade land­ing gear sys­tems.

The three part­ners are col­lab­o­rat­ing to improve the safe­ty and over­all per­for­mance of eVTOL vehi­cles by address­ing weight, struc­tur­al effi­cien­cy, ener­gy absorp­tion and elec­tron­ic sys­tem inte­gra­tion in the land­ing gear design and man­u­fac­tur­ing process.

“Our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Hyundai WIA and Mecaer is a tes­ta­ment to Supernal’s com­mit­ment to inno­va­tion and the high­est stan­dards of safe­ty, design and man­u­fac­tur­ing for AAM,” said Jai­won Shin, pres­i­dent of Hyundai Motor Group and CEO of Super­nal.

“This part­ner­ship unites our col­lec­tive strengths and exper­tise to deliv­er aero­space-grade eVTOL land­ing gear in record time and ensure their scal­a­bil­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. These types of auto­mo­tive and aero­space strate­gic alliances are key to the growth and suc­cess of our emerg­ing indus­try.”

The part­ner­ship is crit­i­cal to Supernal’s efforts to pio­neer high-scale pro­duc­tion process­es that will meet future demands of the AAM indus­try and stream­line man­u­fac­tur­ing by incor­po­rat­ing state-of-the-art mate­ri­als and effi­cient assem­bly tech­nolo­gies.

”Hyundai WIA looks for­ward to lever­ag­ing our exper­tise from the auto­mo­tive indus­try in large-scale parts man­u­fac­tur­ing for the ben­e­fit of Supernal’s upcom­ing eVTOL air­craft,” added Jae-Wook Jung, pres­i­dent and CEO of Hyundai WIA.

“We fore­see sig­nif­i­cant poten­tial to help demon­strate how cross-indus­try effi­cien­cies can address endur­ing sup­ply chain chal­lenges, as well as the poten­tial cre­at­ed by a new cat­e­go­ry of civ­il avi­a­tion.”

Mecaer CEO Bruno Spag­no­li­ni con­clud­ed: “We are espe­cial­ly proud to announce our par­tic­i­pa­tion in this indus­try-lead­ing strate­gic part­ner­ship and to have teamed with Super­nal and Hyundai WIA to design, devel­op and man­u­fac­ture a ful­ly inte­grat­ed wheeled land­ing gear for the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty company’s eVTOL vehi­cle.

“We are extreme­ly appre­cia­tive of the trust Super­nal has shown in the abil­i­ty of the Mecaer and Hyundai WIA team to pro­duce and inno­vate its land­ing gear sys­tem.”

Ear­li­er this week at the Seoul Air Show, Super­nal announced a strate­gic part­ner­ship with Kore­an Air to help accel­er­ate the design of an eVTOL vehi­cle and devel­op the AAM ecosys­tem in Korea, includ­ing exchang­ing tech­ni­cal data and joint­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in work­shops and pro­grams to help devel­op an AAM ecosys­tem.

Super­nal and Kore­an Air to devel­op advanced air mobil­i­ty vehi­cles and oper­a­tional ecosys­tem