LIFT’s HEXA 2: “More Power, Greater Thrust, Faster Speeds, Longer Flight Time”

U.S‑based eVTOL com­pa­ny, LIFT, has released its HEXA Gen 2 air­craft, the first major upgrade since pro­duc­tion began in 2021, reports a press release.

The new one-seat per­son­al fly­ing vehi­cle incor­po­rates major hard­ware and firmware updates to its flight con­trol com­put­ers; an upgrad­ed pow­er­train sys­tem; new sen­sors; and struc­tur­al enhance­ments. Togeth­er, these sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost the per­for­mance, reli­a­bil­i­ty and main­tain­abil­i­ty of the craft.

Key Upgrades in HEXA 2

More Pow­er­ful Elec­tron­ic Speed Con­trollers (ESCs)

For the first time, the craft has cus­tom designed, in-house, new 200 Amp ESC — lever­ag­ing state of the art field ori­ent­ed con­trol (FOC), which pro­vides for much smoother (sine-wave), more pow­er­ful (20 per­cent), more effi­cient (6 per­cent), and sig­nif­i­cant­ly qui­eter motor con­trol. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, a dual-CAN­bus, RS485, PWM inter­face offers redun­dant com­mu­ni­ca­tions and improved cool­ing, as well as upgrad­ed weath­eri­sa­tion to IP 64, allow­ing the HEXA 2 to oper­ate in more diverse weath­er con­di­tions includ­ing pre­cip­i­ta­tion and con­den­sa­tion. 

Larg­er Pro­pellers 

HEXA 2 fea­tures larg­er, 42” car­bon fibre pro­pellers, result­ing in a 10 per­cent over­all increase in pro­peller area. 16 degrees of pitch allows for high­er thrust at low­er RPM and more effi­cient oper­a­tions at high­er den­si­ty alti­tudes. These new pro­pellers fea­ture winglets, which reduce pro­peller tip vor­tices that are major con­trib­u­tors to noise lev­els.

The pow­er­train enhance­ments result in per­for­mance improve­ments includ­ing a 33 per­cent increase in max thrust; up to 20 per­cent increase in flight time; and 15–25 per­cent reduc­tion in already low noise lev­els. 

Flight Con­trol Com­put­ers

HEXA 2’s upgrad­ed 3x redun­dant autopi­lot fea­tures a 60 per­cent improve­ment in com­pu­ta­tion­al band­width; an upgrad­ed ground con­trol sta­tion soft­ware sys­tem; new automa­tion and fine tun­ing con­trols; as well as improved ther­mal man­age­ment allow­ing HEXA to fly reli­ably in extreme tem­per­a­tures.

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Addi­tion­al Upgrades to HEXA’s Avion­ics 

These include improved sen­sors, pro­vid­ing greater accu­ra­cy, reli­a­bil­i­ty and inter­fer­ence resilience. A new, dual anten­na GNSS-Aid­ed Iner­tial Nav­i­ga­tion Sys­tem com­bines MEMS iner­tial sen­sors, two high-sen­si­tiv­i­ty GNSS receivers and advanced Kalman fil­ter­ing algo­rithms to pro­vide improved esti­mates of posi­tion, veloc­i­ty and ori­en­ta­tion. 

Using two sep­a­rate GNSS receivers and anten­nas enables accu­rate head­ing mea­sure­ments with­out reliance on vehi­cle dynam­ics or inter­fer­ence prone mag­net­ic sen­sors.

HEXA 2 Extend­ed Range 

The com­pa­ny is present­ly devel­op­ing break­through, extend­ed range bat­tery packs lever­ag­ing the lat­est lithi­um bat­tery chemistries. With up to twice the ener­gy den­si­ty, HEXA 2 ER will have twice the flight time (up to 30 min­utes). HEXA 2 ER is expect­ed for release in 2025. This is to be an option.

Matt Chasen, Founder and CEO of LIFT, com­ment­ed, “Air­craft Flight oper­a­tors are train­ing on the new sys­tems, and we antic­i­pate the first HEXA 2 cus­tomer flights to take place ear­ly this Autumn. You can book your HEXA 2 flight experience today (Sep­tem­ber — Octo­ber 27 in the Austin, Texas area) with more cities and dates to come soon.”

Invest­ment

He con­tin­ued, “While LIFT has raised over USD22 mil­lion invest­ment to date, we are now offer­ing the gen­er­al pub­lic a fur­ther oppor­tu­ni­ty to invest in the com­pa­ny.”

Please Click on the Link Below for Details

https://invest.liftaircraft.com/?utm_source=dmrliftaircraftlandingpage&utm_medium=corporatesite&tnames=corporatesite

HEXA was the first eVTOL air­craft to enter pro­duc­tion and pay-per-flight oper­a­tions in the Unit­ed States. With a fleet of 16 craft, HEXA has been show­cased in North Amer­i­ca, Europe, Asia and the Mid­dle East. In 2023, the com­pa­ny launched the world’s first pay-per-flight eVTOL oper­a­tions in Austin, Texas, and in 2024 launched a 25 city U.S tour.

Matt Chasen

Because type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is not required for ultra­light class vehi­cles, the com­pa­ny aims to pro­duce new mod­els every five to sev­en years com­pared to decades for cer­ti­fied air­craft.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.liftaircraft.com/aircraft

(Top image: LIFT HEXA 2)

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