Alaka’i Technologies is latest eVTOL aircraft developer to join NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility National Campaign

Alaka’i Tech­nolo­gies, which is cur­rent­ly build­ing its hydro­gen-pow­ered eVTOL air­craft — known as Skai — has joined NASA’s Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) Nation­al Cam­paign as a vehi­cle part­ner.

The com­pa­ny will join oth­er indus­try part­ners, includ­ing Wisk, to help NASA begin to address vehi­cle readi­ness as part of the cam­paign, which will begin in 2022.

While Wisk’s part­ner­ship with NASA is designed to empha­sise its expe­ri­ence in eVTOL vehi­cle devel­op­ment and flight test, with a focus on a safe­ty-first mind­set toward advanc­ing autonomous flight, Alaka’i will bring new tech­nolo­gies high­light­ed by an eVTOL air­craft pow­ered by hydro­gen fuel cells.

Davis Hack­en­berg, NASA’s Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty mis­sion inte­gra­tion man­ag­er, said: “Our vehi­cle part­ner­ships are crit­i­cal to NASA and the indus­try suc­cess in AAM. They are the cor­ner­stone of our data col­lec­tion that will sup­port stan­dard­i­s­a­tion, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and even­tu­al­ly the oper­a­tional approval for safe and scal­able UAM oper­a­tions.”

Alaka’i’s Skai air­craft design will seat up to five pas­sen­gers and trav­el at speeds of up to 115mph, although it will like­ly be reduced to 85mph for local trips. It has a pay­load of up to 1,000lbs and can be refu­elled in less than 10 min­utes. Alaka’i also believes the every­day ‘sweet spot’ for trav­el will be range between 15 and 150 miles.

The hydro­gen cells will gen­er­ate the elec­tric­i­ty used to pow­er the air­craft, pow­er­ing on board sys­tems and six qui­et elec­tric out­run­ner motors, which will pro­vide the lift.

The Nation­al Cam­paign is part­ner­ing with indus­try part­ners to test inven­tive urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) vehi­cles, or elec­tric-pow­ered ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing vehi­cles (eVTOLs), to see how these indus­try-devel­oped designs can safe­ly inter­act with oth­er air traf­fic in the future.

These part­ners will focus on demon­strat­ing inte­grat­ed oper­a­tions through flight activ­i­ties with vehi­cles and third-par­ty air­space ser­vice providers at var­i­ous loca­tions in the nation­al air­space sys­tem around the coun­try.

The NC Inte­grat­ed Dry Run Test in Decem­ber will be the first step of the cam­paign, which will use a heli­copter as a sur­ro­gate UAM to devel­op a data base­line for future flight test­ing.

Fol­low­ing this test­ing, the devel­op­men­tal test in 2021 will use Joby Aviation’s air taxi design and include activ­i­ties such as design­ing flight sce­nar­ios for the par­tic­i­pants to fly, exer­cis­ing range deploy­ment and data col­lect­ing pro­to­cols.

Both types of vehi­cle designs and propul­sion sys­tems will enable the Nation­al Cam­paign to con­tin­ue its mis­sion of engag­ing with diverse vehi­cle devel­op­ers and man­u­fac­tur­ers in emerg­ing avi­a­tion mar­kets for pas­sen­ger and car­go trans­porta­tion in urban, sub­ur­ban, rur­al, and region­al envi­ron­ments.