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Dufour Aerospace Achieves “First Series of Drone Flights with Hybrid-Electric Engine from Vertical Takeoff to Full-Forward Flight and Back”

Swiss-based drone devel­op­er, Dufour Aero­space, announced this week an impor­tant mile­stone: the com­ple­tion of its first flight test cam­paign with a hybrid-elec­tric sys­tem, designed in-house, for its Aero2 drone, reports a press release. The Aero2 flew a series of tri­al flights in Zurich, with the hybrid sys­tem self-charg­ing its bat­ter­ies while in flight. 

These tests “com­plete Dufour’s vision of a hybrid-elec­tric pow­er­train, with an inno­v­a­tive tilt-wing design and autonomous flight,” explains the release. “It is believed to be the first-ever suc­cess­ful jour­ney of a large-scale­se­r­i­al hybrid-elec­tric air­craft, tran­si­tion­ing from ver­ti­cal take­off to for­ward flight.”

Sascha Hard­eg­ger, CEO of Dufour Aero­space, com­ment­ed, “We achieved a major mile­stone with these tri­als. As all of Dufour’s in-house devel­op­ments — the flight con­trol sys­tem and con­trol soft­ware, pow­er man­age­ment sys­tem, and the inte­grat­ed pow­er­train — must work togeth­er seam­less­ly to cre­ate this.”

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The release con­tin­ues, “Upon tran­si­tion to for­ward flight, the Aero2 hybrid-elec­tric sys­tem is engaged to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty on board, which pow­ers the elec­tric motors and recharges the bat­ter­ies. At present, the hybrid sys­tem uses con­ven­tion­al gaso­line, but is being read­ied for heav­ier fuels such as sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fuel and kerosene.” 

Hard­eg­ger point­ed out, “The beau­ty of the Aero2 is mis­sion-effi­cien­cy and a sim­pler sys­tem for charg­ing air­craft. Our cus­tomers do not need to plug in the Aero2 for hours to run their next mis­sion. Recharg­ing is accom­plished in the air, not on the ground, enabling back-to-back mis­sions. It can land, exchange the pay­load, and restart the next mis­sion imme­di­ate­ly.”

He con­tin­ued, “It demon­strates that our drone will be mis­sion-ready for all of the use cas­es we envi­sion. Ini­tial­ly, we are focus­ing on the deliv­ery of crit­i­cal car­go such as med­ical goods or urgent­ly need­ed spare parts, where we are see­ing a lot of oper­a­tors and end-users wait­ing for effi­cient trans­port solu­tions.” 

Sascha Hard­eg­ger

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.dufour.aero

(Top image: Aero2 Drone — cred­it: Dufour Aero­space)

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