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LYTE Aviation to work with Lange Aviation and Cranfield University on its 40-seater VTOL aircraft’s hybrid-hydrogen power

LYTE Avi­a­tion and Lange Avi­a­tion have joined forces to sup­port Cran­field Uni­ver­si­ty’s recent­ly approved EPSRC Cen­tre for Doc­tor­al Train­ing in Net Zero Avi­a­tion.

Cran­field Uni­ver­si­ty has won over £25 mil­lion to estab­lish two new Cen­tres for Doc­tor­al Train­ing (CDT) focus­ing on advanc­ing water secu­ri­ty and net zero avi­a­tion. Over 120 stu­dents will devel­op high-lev­el skills and tech­nolo­gies through the cen­tres, which will be close­ly linked to indus­try. Cran­field is also part of a third new cen­tre, led by Lough­bor­ough Uni­ver­si­ty, focus­ing on advanc­ing hydro­gen tech­nolo­gies.

The fund­ing forms part of the UK’s biggest-ever invest­ment in engi­neer­ing and phys­i­cal sci­ences doc­tor­al skills, totalling more than £1 bil­lion and cre­at­ing 65 new Cen­tres for Doc­tor­al Train­ing, and was announced today by Michelle Donelan, Sec­re­tary of State for Sci­ence, Inno­va­tion and Tech­nol­o­gy.

Fresh­ta Farzam, founder and CEO of LYTE Avi­a­tion, said: “Our inno­v­a­tive approach for our hybrid-hydro­gen approach for our 40 seater eVTOL requires great pio­neer minds and experts that realise with us a quick and cer­ti­fi­able pro­to­type. And we see Lange Avi­a­tion and their CEO Axel Lange as a great val­ue add-on to our tech­nol­o­gy.

“Our part­ner­ship focus­es on hybridi­s­a­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of our hybrid-hydro­gen pow­er out­put for our pro­to­type. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, we are sup­port­ing Cran­field University’s suc­cess­ful­ly approved EPSRC Cen­tre for Doc­tor­al Train­ing in Net Zero Avi­a­tion pro­gram.”

Panos Laskaridis, Pro­fes­sor of Hybrid Elec­tric Propul­sion in the Cen­tre for Propul­sion and Ther­mal Pow­er Engi­neer­ing, will lead the new cen­tre. He said: “Over the next decade inno­v­a­tive solu­tions are urgent­ly need­ed to decar­bonise avi­a­tion. The knowl­edge, meth­ods and tools devel­oped by this new centre’s grad­u­ates
will help to devel­op the tech­nolo­gies need­ed to dri­ve real change in the avi­a­tion indus­try.”

Lange Avi­a­tion GmbH describes itself as an expert in sus­tain­able air­craft tech­nol­o­gy. The com­pa­ny has devel­oped elec­tric pow­er-plants for oth­er air­crafts for the past 30 years. It pro­duced a fly­ing test bed for fuel cell tech­nol­o­gy in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ger­man Aero­space Cen­ter (DLR), known as ‘Antares DLR-H2’.

The air­craft still car­ries the full pack of Li-Ion bat­ter­ies, and can be flown on fuel-cell pow­er alone, on bat­tery pow­er alone and in hybrid mode. This makes test­ing of new fuel cell sys­tems much eas­i­er. The air­craft was announced in Sep­tem­ber 2008 at Stuttgart Air­port, with the first flight on fuel-cell pow­er alone took place in April 2009. The first pub­lic demon­stra­tion flight took place in July 2009 in Ham­burg.

The com­pa­ny has also devel­oped the next exper­i­men­tal air­craft called the Antares E2. The Antares E2 is a high­er per­for­mance suc­ces­sor to the Antares DLR-H2 and the first flight is due to take place in 2024. Like the H2, it is based on the Antares 20E and it also uses hydro­gen fuel cells.

“We are very much look­ing for­ward to work­ing togeth­er on this excit­ing project”, added Axel Lange.
 
LYTE Avi­a­tion is pio­neer­ing the industry’s first 40-seat eVTOL, a heavy­weight pas­sen­ger mass tran­sit VTOL air­craft brand­ed the Sky­Bus LA-44.  It is also design­ing a car­go vari­ant, SkyTruck LA-44C, offer­ing a pay­load capac­i­ty of 4.5 tons and a recent­ly launched 19-seater X‑Prime ver­sion. With its tan­dem tilt-wing tech­nol­o­gy, pow­er will come from hybrid-hydro­gen-elec­tric tur­bo­props and elec­tric engines.  

Farzam added: “The Sky­Bus / SkyTruck is an ide­al solu­tion to extend cur­rent fer­ry trans­port solu­tions on water­ways, like e.g. in the APAC region or the US, or to extend region­al avi­a­tion with new routes for pas­sen­ger mass and car­go tran­sit, with­out requir­ing a run­way any­more. Mov­ing more peo­ple and more goods, with high­er speed, fre­quen­cy and flex­i­bil­i­ty, from point to point.”
 
Owing to the use of proven and exist­ing tech­nolo­gies avail­able today, LYTE Avi­a­tion is esti­mat­ing enter­ing the mar­ket with­in five to six years.

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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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