Fraundorfer Aeronautics partners with Uedelhoven Studios to help bring Tensor 600X aircraft to Advanced Air Mobility market

Fraun­dor­fer Aero­nau­tics has entered into a strate­gic part­ner­ship with engi­neer­ing ser­vices com­pa­ny Uedel­hoven Stu­dios, with the aim of bring­ing its new­ly-devel­oped Ten­sor 600X air­craft into series pro­duc­tion and fur­ther devel­op it for com­mer­cial use.

The Ger­man start­up plans to bring a two-seater mod­el for per­son­al mobil­i­ty to the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket as ear­ly as next year, after it com­plet­ed a maid­en flight at the start of this year.

The air­craft, which is a new­ly devel­oped ‘com­pound gyro­copter’, works on the prin­ci­ple of autoro­ta­tion. Ener­gy con­tained in the air is used to dri­ve the rotor and in addi­tion, a wing gen­er­ates fur­ther lift to increase per­for­mance and sta­bil­i­ty.

Fraun­dor­fer Aero­nau­tics has said the Ten­sor 600X is about twice as effi­cient as a com­pa­ra­ble heli­copter — with a range of 600km and a top speed of 200km/h. By 2023, Fraun­dor­fer Aero­nau­tics will launch the Ten­sor 800X, a fur­ther devel­op­ment of the Ten­sor 600X, which is intend­ed to be approved under Euro­pean avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tions and suit­able for com­mer­cial use. It will be used for air taxi mis­sions, air logis­tics or for sup­ply flights to hard-to-reach regions.

Christoph Fraun­dor­fer, Founder and CEO of Fraun­dor­fer Aero­nau­tics, said: “With the Ten­sor we are break­ing new ground in mobil­i­ty. In the devel­op­ment of the machine, we have relied on com­plete­ly new and high­ly effi­cient tech­nolo­gies, but we are also very inno­v­a­tive in terms of pro­to­type con­struc­tion and pro­duc­tion.

“Con­ven­tion­al meth­ods of the avi­a­tion indus­try are often no longer prac­ti­ca­ble, not eco­nom­i­cal and too time-con­sum­ing. Uedel­hoven Stu­dios is exact­ly the right part­ner for us. The com­pa­ny is already a leader in design and pro­to­type con­struc­tion in the auto­mo­tive indus­try. Now we are tak­ing off togeth­er in the field of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty”.

Uedel­hoven Stu­dios is a design and engi­neer­ing ser­vices com­pa­ny based in Gaimer­sheim, Ger­many and has said it can imple­ment con­cepts in a few weeks that would take months when using con­ven­tion­al meth­ods from the avi­a­tion indus­try. 

Jür­gen Uedel­hoven, CEO of Uedel­hoven Stu­dios, added: “Our com­mon goal is to do pio­neer­ing work and to actu­al­ly serve the field of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty for the first time.

“We also want to take devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion meth­ods to a new lev­el in avi­a­tion that has nev­er been seen before. While con­tribut­ing our exper­tise in con­struc­tion, design and pro­to­type con­struc­tion, we are also learn­ing from Fraun­dor­fer Aero­nau­tics to obtain our cer­ti­fi­ca­tion as an avi­a­tion sup­pli­er.”

Fraun­dor­fer Aero­nau­tics say the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Ten­sor make it very suit­able for use in urban envi­ron­ments, such as air­port feed­er ser­vices. But it added that the Ten­sor’s capa­bil­i­ties also offer great advan­tages between cities and in regions with weak infra­struc­ture, for exam­ple for res­cue ser­vices, trans­port flights or dis­as­ter con­trol. 

The con­cept of the air­craft is also pre­pared for all forms of future mobil­i­ty, and has been designed for dif­fer­ent types of propul­sion. “We will use these tech­nolo­gies when the legal frame­work con­di­tions are in place,” Fraun­dor­fer added.