BETA launches electric vehicle charging mobile app

BETA has launched a mobile app to sup­port its elec­tric charg­ing infra­struc­ture across the US with 10 sites online used to charge its ALIA eVTOL air­craft dur­ing a cross-coun­try trip from New York to Arkansas and back, with anoth­er over 50 sites under con­struc­tion or await­ing per­mits.

The road dis­tance of 1235 miles com­pares with 1079 flight miles, and the com­pa­ny cre­at­ed its charg­ers with a mul­ti­modal design to increase acces­si­bil­i­ty. Each charg­ing sta­tion in the net­work is mul­ti­modal and sup­ports today’s ground elec­tric vehi­cles as well as tomorrow’s elec­tric air­craft, as well as being inter­op­er­a­ble to sup­port elec­tric air­craft oth­er than BETA’s.

In line with BETA’s over­all car­go-first approach, the app is designed for both indi­vid­ual con­sumers as well as enter­pris­es, and includes func­tions like maps to locate charg­ing sta­tions, pay­ment pro­cess­ing, and resource man­age­ment.

Last month, Bris­tow Group ordered five ALIA-250 air­craft — with the option to pur­chase an addi­tion­al 50 — with a max­i­mum range of 250 nau­ti­cal miles that can car­ry 1,400 lbs of pay­load, or six peo­ple includ­ing a pilot.

In April, avi­a­tion com­pa­ny LCI signed an agree­ment to acquire up to 125 ALIA eVTOL air­craft to com­ple­ment its exist­ing fleet of heli­copters and fixed-wing air­craft, almost dou­bling the num­ber of air­craft on its avi­a­tion plat­form to over 270 units.