LYTE Aviation “Chooses H3 DYNAMICS for Hydrogen Propulsion and Refueling of SKYBUS eVTOL Aircraft” 

LYTE Avi­a­tion announced last week it has select­ed France-based H3 Dynam­ics to equip its new 40-seater eVTOL air­craft with avi­a­tion-grade hydro­gen-elec­tric fuel cell propul­sion sys­tems, reports a press release. LYTE is also sup­port­ing the instal­la­tion of H3 Dynam­ics’ self-con­tained elec­trol­yser sys­tems at its air­port des­ti­na­tions. 

UK-based LYTE, found­ed in 2020, is pio­neer­ing the industry’s first 40-seat eVTOL, a heavy-weight pas­sen­ger mass tran­sit air­craft named the Sky­Bus LA-44. The com­pa­ny is also design­ing a car­go vari­ant, SkyTruck LA-44C, with a pay­load of 4.5 tons, in addi­tion to a 19-seater ver­sion busi­ness jet, the X‑Prime. 

The release explains, “eVTOLs have long-suf­fered from lim­it­ed flight times since they rely on heavy bat­tery-packs, but new hydro­gen-elec­tric VTOLs with much longer range are on the way. For exam­ple, Joby Avi­a­tion just recent­ly flew its 5‑seater eVTOL air­craft for 523 miles on hydro­gen. This is almost six times the range of its 150 mile bat­tery-ver­sion and is a game-chang­er for the eVTOL sec­tor.”

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Fresh­ta Farzam, LYTE Aviation’s Founder and CEO, com­ment­ed, “The Sky­Bus and SkyTruck are ide­al solu­tions to extend today’s region­al avi­a­tion to places with no run­way. Unlike most eVTOLs car­ry­ing a max­i­mum of 2 to 4 pas­sen­gers, we want to move more peo­ple and more goods, with high­er speed, low­er-cost, fre­quen­cy and flex­i­bil­i­ty.” 

LYTE has cho­sen H3 Dynam­ics because its sys­tems are proven and durable, backed by sol­id indus­try ref­er­ences includ­ing recent work on an AIRBUS A330 APU fuel cell. And with more than 15 years devel­op­ment of hydro­gen tech­nolo­gies in the aero­space and defence sec­tor, the H3 Dynam­ics team offers a unique safe­ty and per­for­mance-dri­ven exper­tise. The com­pa­ny can help guide LYTE’s hydro­gen VTOL design and accel­er­ate its time to mar­ket via inte­grat­ing H3 Dynam­ics’ aero-com­pli­ant fuel cell pow­er sys­tems, in a design capa­ble of work­ing along­side tilt-wing and tilt-engine move­ments. 

Taras Wankewycz, Founder and CEO of H3 Dynam­ics Group, remarked, “Giv­en the progress achieved by us along­side the broad­er ecosys­tem, we believe now is the time to begin tran­si­tion­ing eVTOLs from bat­ter­ies to hydro­gen.”

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

Mean­while, H3 Dynam­ics is to work with LYTE to ensure hydro­gen is avail­able for its air­craft regard­less of the loca­tion. The com­pa­ny now sup­plies a range of self-con­tained hydro­gen elec­trol­yser sys­tems capa­ble of pro­duc­ing green hydro­gen on demand. 

Farzam point­ed out, “As we are already in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with air­ports in Europe and the US, and we need to make sure that our cus­tomers can ben­e­fit from effi­cient and eas­i­ly avail­able hydro­gen infra­struc­ture solu­tions.”

Cur­rent­ly, LYTE is work­ing on 19 dif­fer­ent projects in Europe, U.S, Asia and Africa, and has secured 23 pre-orders worth EUR920m with­in the last 12 months. Fur­ther­more, the air­craft has expand­ed its range to up to 2,000km for human­i­tar­i­an aid and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters use-cas­es. The com­pa­ny is look­ing to enter the com­mer­cial mar­ket with­in five to six years. 

For more infor­ma­tion

www.lyteaviation.com

www.h3dynamics.com

(Top image: LYTE Avi­a­tion Sky­Bus)

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