Dovetail Chooses Mobius.energy to Supply Batteries for Electric Conversion of Commuter Aircraft

Dove­tail Elec­tric Avi­a­tion is to incor­po­rate Mobius.energy Corporation’s Husky bat­tery mod­ule to pow­er a total of 65 of its elec­tric con­ver­sions of Cess­na Grand Car­a­van and oth­er com­muter air­craft.

Dove­tail plans to bring con­vert­ed bat­tery elec­tric com­muters to mar­ket as ful­ly cer­ti­fied air­craft by 2025 and Mobius will sup­port Dovetail’s efforts with a cer­ti­fi­able bat­tery solu­tion.

The con­ver­sion of tur­bine air­craft to elec­tric propul­sion promis­es to bring zero-emis­sion avi­a­tion into the main­stream much faster and more cost-effec­tive­ly than via new­ly com­mis­sioned elec­tri­cal planes.

Dove­tail expects to achieve a Sup­ple­men­tal Type Cer­tifi­cate (STC) for con­vert­ed air­craft with­in three years, com­pared with more than eight to ten years for clean sheet elec­tric air­craft, and at a frac­tion of the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion costs, and the con­vert­ed air­craft will be qui­eter and enjoy reduced oper­at­ing costs of around 40%.

The com­pa­ny has estab­lished cus­tomer rela­tion­ships with a range of air­lines includ­ing Australia’s Syd­ney Sea­planes, Alt Air, SeaAir Pacif­ic, Europe’s Volotea, Air Nos­trum, Isla Air, and Monte Air­craft Leas­ing. It has also recent­ly announced Rex Air­lines, the largest region­al air­line oper­a­tor in Aus­tralia, as a strate­gic part­ner.

Dove­tail CEO and co-founder David Doral said: “Mobius’s bat­tery mod­ule sup­ports our efforts to reduce the oper­at­ing cost of region­al air ser­vice oper­a­tion by over 40 per­cent, and we are excit­ed to be the fixed-wing air­craft launch part­ner for it.”

At 800V, the Husky’s mod­u­lar archi­tec­ture includes an inno­v­a­tive ther­mal man­age­ment sys­tem and a cus­tomis­able bat­tery man­age­ment sys­tem. Mul­ti­ple mod­ules can be con­nect­ed in par­al­lel to build a pack to pow­er an air­craft and to pro­vide redun­dan­cy for improved safe­ty.

The mod­u­lar approach rad­i­cal­ly sim­pli­fies bat­tery pack instal­la­tion, main­te­nance, and removal. With only 20% of the non-cell com­po­nent over­head, Mobius’s indus­try-lead­ing light­weight design results in a high ener­gy den­si­ty of 216 Wh/kg at the pack lev­el using mar­ket-proven Li-ion bat­tery cells.

Mobius CEO and founder Eugene Choi said: “We are absolute­ly thrilled to part­ner with Dove­tail to sup­ply bat­ter­ies for elec­tric con­ver­sion of its com­muter air­craft. Dove­tail and Mobius are well aligned to bring zero emis­sions avi­a­tion to the main­stream, with the best tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions avail­able now while mak­ing pro­vi­sions for future inno­va­tion.”

In Novem­ber 2021, a con­sor­tium fea­tur­ing Mobius.Energy, MintAir, Sky­works Aero­nau­tics, Lotte Rental and Lotte Cor­po­ra­tion was estab­lished to help launch eVTOL air­craft ser­vices in the city of Incheon, South Korea.

South Korea con­sor­tium set up to estab­lish eVTOL air taxi ser­vices in Incheon, which includes new pilot train­ing pro­gramme