Dovetail Collaborates with Zeusch Aviation “to Develop Hybrid-Electric King Air Retrofits”

Dove­tail Elec­tric Avi­a­tion and Zeusch Avi­a­tion are col­lab­o­rat­ing to joint­ly work on the devel­op­ment of hybrid-elec­tric retro­fits for the twin tur­bo-prop Beechcraft King Air, reports a press release.

The agree­ment, for­malised at the recent Paris Air Show, out­lines a part­ner­ship “to assess the tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty of con­vert­ing part of Zeusch’s King Air fleet using Dovetail’s pro­pri­etary bat­tery and elec­tric propul­sion tech­nolo­gies, to be inte­grat­ed with a tur­bo­gen­er­a­tor work­ing as a range exten­der,” explains the release. 

The aim is to enable longer range flights while reduc­ing emis­sions and low­er oper­at­ing costs, to sup­port mis­sion-crit­i­cal oper­a­tions such as med­ical flights, as well as aer­i­al map­ping sur­veil­lance and oth­er spe­cial mis­sions.

David Doral, Dovetail’s CEO, com­ment­ed, “The elec­tric dri­ve­train, includ­ing our inno­v­a­tive bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy (DovePack­TM) and pro­pri­etary elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem (Dove­Pow­er), has the poten­tial to deliv­er the range required for many con­ven­tion­al mis­sions while achiev­ing supe­ri­or eco­nom­ics with addi­tion­al ben­e­fits.”

He con­tin­ued,  “The abil­i­ty to oper­ate in only elec­tric mode will be a key dif­fer­en­tia­tor for some spe­cial mis­sions, where a low noise pro­file is a crit­i­cal ele­ment.” Adding, “Zeusch’s input and col­lab­o­ra­tion will help us opti­mise the plat­form for mul­ti­ple real life mis­sions.”

Under the part­ner­ship, Dove­tail will work towards the inte­gra­tion of its bat­tery and Elec­tric Propul­sion Sys­tem with range-extend­ing tur­bo­gen­er­a­tors in to the King Air plat­form, for Zeusch’s require­ments. 

The release con­tin­ues, “The hybrid-elec­tric con­fig­u­ra­tion under devel­op­ment is based on a series archi­tec­ture, allow­ing for flex­i­ble mis­sion per­for­mance while sig­nif­i­cant­ly improv­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty met­rics, includ­ing a very low noise pro­file.” 

The DovePack and Dove­Pow­er com­bi­na­tion should reduce the car­bon foot­print by around 40 per­cent com­pared to cur­rent tur­bine engines. Addi­tion­al­ly, the noise foot­print under full elec­tric pow­er is expect­ed to be up to 30 per­cent low­er. Zeusch could become one of the first oper­a­tors glob­al­ly to adopt cer­ti­fied hybrid-elec­tric King Air con­ver­sions. 

Dan­ny van Ieperen, Zeusch Aviation’s Tech­ni­cal Direc­tor, remarked, “We main­ly oper­ate mis­sions that are for the com­mon good like trans­plant, med­ical repa­tri­a­tion, sur­vey and tele­vi­sion broad­cast­ing flights. It is our goal to car­ry this out as envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly as pos­si­ble. Dovetail’s hybrid-elec­tric pow­er source on our King Air air­craft fits this ambi­tion.” 

For more infor­ma­tion

www.dovetail.aero 

www.zeusch.com

(Top image: Dan­ny van Ieperen, David Doral at the recent Paris Air Show)

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