Bye Aerospace secures additional funding to help build first eFlyer2 prototype

Bye Aero­space has received $10 mil­lion in strate­gic and ven­ture financ­ing, allow­ing the com­pa­ny to begin ser­i­al pro­duc­tion of the first pro­duc­tion-con­form­ing eFly­er air­craft pro­to­type.

CEO George E. Bye not­ed that although the two finan­cial trans­ac­tions were suc­cess­ful­ly closed dur­ing coro­n­avirus restric­tions, much of the due dili­gence and plan­ning was com­plet­ed before the out­break of Covid-19. Pre­vi­ous­ly, in late 2018 Bye Aero­space also com­plet­ed a major invest­ment by SUBARU-SBI Inno­va­tion Fund.

He said: “Since rais­ing the $10 mil­lion we have com­plet­ed crit­i­cal design review in ear­ly June and are now under­way with mul­ti­ple test flights of the eFly­er 2 tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor. Next, we will be solid­i­fy­ing our sup­ply chain rela­tion­ships to begin assem­bly on Ser­i­al #001, the first pro­duc­tion-con­form­ing eFly­er 2 air­craft.

“I would like to thank every­one involved in the trans­ac­tions for their rig­or­ous par­tic­i­pa­tion in this process. My spe­cial thanks to the lead­ers, advi­sors, and indus­try part­ners of our fund­ing sources for their involve­ment over the past year in exe­cut­ing the details of this impor­tant phase of fund­ing.”

Bye Aero­space is devel­op­ing the FAA FAR 23-cer­ti­fied fam­i­ly of all-elec­tric eFly­er gen­er­al avi­a­tion air­craft, start­ing with the two-seat eFly­er 2 for the pro­fes­sion­al flight train­ing mis­sion, and the eFly­er 4 for air-taxi and advanced train­ing uses.

All of the com­pa­ny’s cur­rent and future fam­i­lies of air­craft fea­ture elec­tric air­craft solu­tions which pro­duce no CO₂ and it says they have been designed to answer com­pelling mar­ket needs.

These include five-fold low­er oper­at­ing costs, zero emis­sions, and decreased noise. Bye Aero­space esti­mates the eFly­er will elim­i­nate five mil­lion met­ric tons of CO₂ each year for flight train­ing alone.

Chrysan­the Gus­sis, a Bay Area green tech investor, finance expert and mem­ber of Bye Aerospace’s strate­gic advi­so­ry board, added: “Elec­tric flight is the future of air trav­el, and even more so now fol­low­ing the coro­n­avirus out­break, espe­cial­ly as the demand for afford­able, small­er, green­er air­craft increas­es. We are see­ing more investors recog­nise the vision of Bye Aero­space as a leader in this sec­tor.”