Electric Power Systems to install battery power for SkyDrive two-seater aircraft

Sky­Drive, a Toy­ota devel­op­er of fly­ing cars and car­go drones, has select­ed Elec­tric Pow­er Sys­tems in Utah to pro­vide high-pow­er scal­able pow­er­trains cer­ti­fi­able for elec­tric avi­a­tion to man­u­fac­ture the bat­tery sys­tem for the SD-05 two-seater air­craft.

Sky­Drive is devel­op­ing fly­ing cars that utilise the sky for dai­ly trans­porta­tion, aim­ing to start a ser­vice in the Osa­ka Bay Area using the Sky­Drive Type SD-05 which is cur­rent­ly apply­ing for type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

EP Sys­tems has bat­tery sys­tems cur­rent­ly pow­er­ing cus­tomer flight demon­stra­tor vehi­cles such as NASA X‑57, Auro­ra Flight Sci­ences Pega­sus, and oth­er air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ers.

The com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly in part­ner­ship with the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) to cer­ti­fy bat­ter­ies for gen­er­al avi­a­tion air­craft and will com­plete its first Tech­ni­cal Stan­dard Order in 2023.

EP devel­ops ener­gy stor­age sys­tems, DC fast-charg­ing sta­tions, and elec­tric propul­sion prod­ucts for the aero­space, defence, auto­mo­tive, marine, and indus­tri­al trac­tion indus­tries.

Boe­ing and Safran invest­ed in EP Sys­tems in 2019 and 2021 to devel­op and cer­ti­fy its EPiC bat­tery sys­tem for high-vol­ume man­u­fac­tur­ing, for cus­tomers that include the Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion (NASA) and the FAA as well as Boe­ing, Safran, Bell Tex­tron, Embraer, and Dia­mond Air­craft.

Sky­Drive has select­ed the EPiC bat­tery sys­tem, which includes bat­tery mod­ules and a bat­tery man­age­ment sys­tem, and which is safe for han­dling the dis­con­nect box for the SD-05 air­craft, with the tar­get of launch­ing its ser­vice using fly­ing cars in the Osa­ka Bay Area in 2025.

Elec­tric Pow­er Sys­tems CEO Nathan Mil­le­cam said: “We are excit­ed to be a part of Sky­Drive’s plans for the future of flight and look­ing for­ward to col­lab­o­rat­ing with the team.”

Sky­Drive CEO Tomo­hi­ro Fukuza­wa added: “EP Sys­tems is our ide­al part­ner for this essen­tial ele­ment of our SD-05 two-seater air­craft — it is very focused and com­mit­ted to devel­op­ing reli­able bat­tery sys­tems.”

Last month, Super­nal and Elec­tric Pow­er Sys­tems part­nered to devel­op safe, lighter-weight and cer­ti­fi­able eVTOL vehi­cle bat­ter­ies, hav­ing for­malised an agree­ment at the recent Farn­bor­ough Inter­na­tion­al Air­show 2022.

In May, Sky­Drive reached an agree­ment with the Japan Civ­il Avi­a­tion Bureau (JCAB) to base the type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for its fly­ing car, which refers to the JCAB Air­wor­thi­ness Inspec­tion Man­u­al (AIM) Part II Revi­sion 61.

Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion relates to SkyDrive’s SD-05 two-seat fly­ing car, for which the Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture, Trans­port and Tourism (MLIT) accept­ed an appli­ca­tion for type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in Octo­ber 2021, to launch an air taxi ser­vice in 2025.