Textron eAviation’s Nexus eVTOL Demonstrator “Achieves Fuselage Assembly Milestone”

Tex­tron eAv­i­a­tion, a Tex­tron sub­sidiary com­pa­ny, announced this week it has suc­cess­ful­ly con­nect­ed the two halves of the fuse­lage of its eVTOL Nexus, full-scale tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor, reports a press release. 

This impor­tant mile­stone involves join­ing the cen­tral sec­tions of the air­craft that are designed to seat pas­sen­gers. This fuse­lage assem­bly sup­ports the demonstrator’s first flight expect­ed in 2025.

Designed for one pilot and four pas­sen­gers, the zero-emis­sion air­craft will be pow­ered by a dis­trib­uted elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem. Nexus’s four tilt­ing pro­pellers and two aft sta­tion­ary ver­ti­cal rotors are designed to facil­i­tate mul­ti­ple appli­ca­tions, includ­ing pas­sen­ger trans­port, pub­lic air­craft oper­a­tions and car­go.

Kriya Shortt

Kriya Shortt, Pres­i­dent & CEO of Tex­tron eAv­i­a­tion, remarked, “Since the for­ma­tion of the com­pa­ny, the team has been focused on vehi­cle design, per­for­mance con­fir­ma­tion and the build of our first full-scale tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor to test the con­trol and func­tion­al­i­ty of the air­craft.” 

She con­tin­ued, “It is reward­ing to see the vehi­cle begin to take shape, and achiev­ing fuse­lage assem­bly on the demon­stra­tor is a major step in the aircraft’s devel­op­ment.” 

Head­quar­tered in Wichi­ta, Kansas, the Nexus has room for three to four pas­sen­gers and is designed to fly around 100 nau­ti­cal miles on a sin­gle charge with a cruise speed of 120 knots.

Par­ent com­pa­ny, Tex­tron, has over 100 years of exper­tise with an unre­lent­ing ambi­tion for inno­va­tion, embod­ied by its Pip­istrel, Cess­na, Beechcraft and Bell brands.

Nexus Fuse­lage

Found­ed in 2022, Tex­tron eAv­i­a­tion took over the Nexus pro­gram from Textron’s Bell sub­sidiary. Bell had been work­ing on plans for the eVTOL air taxi since 2019.

eAv­i­a­tion is lever­ag­ing the indus­try-lead­ing prod­uct design, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing and after­mar­ket solu­tions from across Textron’s busi­ness­es, cou­pled with the acquired exper­tise of Pip­istrel and Amazil­ia Aero­space, to pur­sue research and devel­op­ment ini­tia­tives relat­ed to sus­tain­able avi­a­tion solu­tions.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.e‑aviation.com

www.textron.com

(Top image: Tex­tron eAv­i­a­tion’s Nexus eVTOL air­craft)

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