BETA Technologies: Further Amazon investment, Successful ALIA Trial Flight

BETA Tech­nolo­gies and its sup­port from Ama­zon con­tin­ues with fur­ther invest­ment from the online web­site (the sec­ond Ama­zon fund­ing via the Cli­mate Pledge Fund after an ini­tial stake last year), along­side a suc­cess­ful tri­al of the ALIA between two Ama­zon Air Hubs in north Ken­tucky and Ohio, reports a press release. The first-ever test of an elec­tric air­craft at Ama­zon facil­i­ties.

Sarah Rhoads, Vice Pres­i­dent of Ama­zon Glob­al Air, com­ment­ed, “BETA Tech­nolo­gies con­tin­ues to take steps for­ward in elec­tri­fy­ing the avi­a­tion indus­try and reduc­ing its impact on our envi­ron­ment, and we are thrilled to have the com­pa­ny con­duct their test flight between two Ama­zon Air hubs.”

She added, “The ALIA test flight offers us fur­ther expe­ri­ence as we stay com­mit­ted to our long-term goal of trans­form­ing our trans­porta­tion net­work into a zero-emis­sions fleet.”

Sarah Rhoads

In recent months, BETA’s ALIA air­craft has expand­ed its “flight test enve­lope.” Most notably, BETA’s craft recent­ly flew from the com­pa­ny’s flight tri­al cen­tre in north­ern New York to north­west­ern Arkansas. This was more than a 1,400-mile jour­ney. The craft recharged on the com­pa­ny’s own charg­ing infra­struc­ture and offered an oppor­tu­ni­ty to gain prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence with ALIA. The mis­sion saw the air­craft fly through six states, includ­ing New York, Ohio, Indi­ana, Illi­nois, Mis­souri and Arkansas.

Kyle Clark, Founder and CEO of BETA Tech­nolo­gies, remarked, “Over the past year, we’ve sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand­ed our test pro­gram to include mar­ket sur­vey flights with cus­tomers, con­duct­ing sev­er­al suc­cess­ful real-life mis­sions.”

He con­tin­ued, “Flights like these are not just an excit­ing and infor­ma­tive step for­ward for our pro­gram, but they also prove the via­bil­i­ty of elec­tric avi­a­tion and show that this tech­nol­o­gy is capa­ble of oper­at­ing with the vari­ables of cross-coun­try fly­ing and in the Nation­al Air­space Sys­tem. The con­fi­dence and invest­ment from part­ners like Ama­zon have been instru­men­tal in get­ting us to this point, and we’re grate­ful for their con­tin­ued sup­port.”

Ama­zon is ded­i­cat­ed to turn­ing the cli­mate cri­sis into cli­mate action and becom­ing net-zero car­bon by 2040 as part of its com­mit­ment to The Cli­mate Pledge, (which it co-found­ed in 2019). To sup­port this vision and tran­si­tion to a low-car­bon econ­o­my, Ama­zon announced the Cli­mate Pledge Fund — a ded­i­cat­ed invest­ment pro­gram with USD2 bil­lion in fund­ing. To date, the Cli­mate Pledge Fund has invest­ed in more than 18 com­pa­nies work­ing to solve cli­mate prob­lems with inno­v­a­tive solu­tions.

Kyle Clark

Kara Hurst, Vice Pres­i­dent of World­wide Sus­tain­abil­i­ty at Ama­zon, said, “It’s incred­i­ble to see the progress BETA Tech­nolo­gies has con­tin­ued to make with its inno­v­a­tive ALIA elec­tric air­craft. We’re thrilled to con­tin­ue to invest in BETA through The Cli­mate Pledge Fund, as we must work togeth­er across indus­tries and com­pa­nies to make mean­ing­ful changes that pos­i­tive­ly impact our plan­et in the fight against cli­mate change.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.beta.team