Hanwha Group invests $145 million in Overair to Develop eVTOL Aircraft

Overair has announced an invest­ment of $145 mil­lion from Han­wha Sys­tems and Han­wha Aero­space to fly its But­ter­fly all-elec­tric exper­i­men­tal pro­to­type in the sec­ond half of 2023.

Han­wha will also pro­vide elec­tric motors and bat­tery packs for Overair’s pro­to­types, as the two com­pa­nies expand their R&D co-oper­a­tion.

Overair co-founder and CEO Ben Tign­er said: “We are well posi­tioned to deliv­er sus­tain­able aer­i­al rideshar­ing to the world through the devel­op­ment of But­ter­fly, while approach­ing the first flight of a pur­pose-built pro­to­type next year.

“We have proven But­ter­fly­’s propul­sion sys­tem and will now begin val­i­dat­ing its abil­i­ty to oper­ate safe­ly in real-world weath­er con­di­tions, by car­ry­ing sig­nif­i­cant pay­loads and fly­ing qui­et­ly.”

But­ter­fly is a six-seat eVTOL air­craft derived from decades of mil­i­tary VTOL pro­grams to reduce sound by using four large pro­pellers that spin slow­ly when hov­er­ing, and even more slow­ly when cruis­ing, to allow it to oper­ate in noise-sen­si­tive high-den­si­ty areas.

Butterfly’s Opti­mum Speed Propul­sion (OSP) sys­tem draws only a frac­tion of the avail­able motor pow­er, giv­ing But­ter­fly extra pay­load capac­i­ty and pow­er mar­gin to oper­ate safe­ly in chal­leng­ing envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions.

Han­wha Sys­tems CEO Sungchul Eoh added: “Han­wha’s basic prin­ci­ple is to focus on dis­rup­tive inno­va­tion to uproot and shift mar­ket and tech­nol­o­gy trends based on its core capa­bil­i­ties.

“Han­wha is select­ing game chang­ing busi­ness­es with eVTOL and with our invest­ment in Overair, we assessed that the com­pa­ny had the patents and core tech­nolo­gies to devel­op a high­ly effi­cient, low noise vehi­cle.

“We see the poten­tial of Overair’s Opti­mum Speed Propul­sion sys­tem and we will con­tin­ue to work togeth­er to find syn­er­gies and bring this break­through tech­nol­o­gy to the world.”

As the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to work toward FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, Overair is also work­ing with NASA and Urban Move­ment Labs in Los Ange­les to devel­op urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) rout­ing and infra­struc­ture.

Ear­li­er this month, Sky­ports announced that it would work with Han­wha Sys­tems on air mobil­i­ty projects that would include col­lab­o­ra­tion in infra­struc­ture, flight ser­vices and a mobil­i­ty plat­form.