First flight demo of VoltAero’s hybrid-electric powertrain for Cassio aircraft announced

VoltAero will per­form the first demon­stra­tion flight of its 800hp, hybrid-elec­tric pow­er­train for its 10-seater Cas­sio air­craft in a live inter­net web­cast next month.

The pre­sen­ta­tion will take place at the Aéro­drôme de Roy­an-Médis in France on 23rd July from 2.30pm CET onwards — and be led by VoltAero CEO and Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer Jean Bot­ti.

Details about the dura­tion of the flight demo have yet to be released, but the day will be anoth­er impor­tant mile­stone by the elec­tric air­craft devel­op­er in the step towards sus­tain­able avi­a­tion. As well as the flight demon­stra­tion, VoltAero will unveil oth­er Cas­sio pro­duc­tion ver­sions and EDEIS — a VoltAero part­ner — will make an announce­ment about a major event sched­uled for August.

Man­u­fac­tured at a pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in Nou­velle Aquitaine region of south­west France, VoltAero’s pro­pri­etary Cas­sio design is based on a sleek, aero­dy­nam­i­cal­ly-opti­mised fuse­lage, a for­ward fixed canard, and an aft-set wing with twin booms that sup­port a high-set hor­i­zon­tal tail.

The air­craft will utilise VoltAero’s hybrid-elec­tric pow­er mod­ule in an aft fuse­lage ‘push­er’ con­fig­u­ra­tion, inte­grat­ing a clus­ter of elec­tric motors with a high-per­for­mance inter­nal com­bus­tion engine that serves as the range exten­der.

An ini­tial tar­get for deliv­er­ies has been set for 2022, begin­ning with the Cas­sio 330, a four-seat con­fig­u­ra­tion with propul­sion from a com­bined hybrid-elec­tric pow­er of 330 kilo­watts.

It will be tai­lored for oper­a­tion by pri­vate own­ers, air taxi/charter com­pa­nies, in com­mer­cial flights for point-to-point region­al trav­el and in var­i­ous util­i­ty-cat­e­go­ry appli­ca­tions.

For more details and to fol­low the web­cast on the day, vis­it www.voltaero.aero