Honeywell to introduce ‘family of fuel cell power systems for UAS’ following acquisition of Ballard Unmanned Systems

Hon­ey­well has acquired assets from Bal­lard Unmanned Sys­tems, a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of Bal­lard Pow­er Sys­tems, strength­en­ing its unmanned air­craft sys­tems (UAS) and Urban Air Mobil­i­ty port­fo­lio.

As part of the acqui­si­tion, Hon­ey­well will take over the key intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, inven­to­ry and equip­ment of Bal­lard Unmanned Sys­tems and also take on Bal­lard’s team of fuel-cell experts.

The deal also sees Hon­ey­well enter the hydro­gen fuel cells mar­ket for UAS and broad­er avi­a­tion appli­ca­tions, and using the added capa­bil­i­ties of Bal­lard Unmanned Sys­tem, it plans to intro­duce a fam­i­ly of fuel cell pow­er sys­tems for a vari­ety of UAS vehi­cles.

Terms of the deal were not dis­closed, and there is no change to Honeywell’s third-quar­ter 2020 out­look as a result of the acqui­si­tion.

“Adding Bal­lard Unmanned Sys­tems to the Hon­ey­well fam­i­ly is anoth­er exam­ple of our com­mit­ment to invest in the grow­ing UAS seg­ment,” said Mike Mad­sen, Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer at Hon­ey­well Aero­space.

“We can now begin pro­duc­ing top-qual­i­ty, scal­able pow­er sys­tems for our UAS cus­tomers and even­tu­al­ly adapt these sys­tems for oth­er future aero­space, defense and adja­cent seg­ment appli­ca­tions.”

A fuel cell uses the chem­i­cal ener­gy of hydro­gen or anoth­er fuel to clean­ly and effi­cient­ly pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty. Unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems pow­ered by fuel cells can fly longer dis­tances, are qui­et and have zero green­house gas emis­sions.

Fuel cells func­tion much like tra­di­tion­al bat­ter­ies but with a key dif­fer­ence: They don’t run out of pow­er or need to be recharged.

In a press release, Hon­ey­well says Bal­lard Unmanned Sys­tems’ fuel cell pow­er sys­tems can run up to three times longer than bat­ter­ies and are five times more reli­able than small engines. Unlike tra­di­tion­al gas engines that have car­bon emis­sions, they utilise hydro­gen — a clean source of ener­gy.

Randy MacEwen, Bal­lard Pres­i­dent and CEO, said: “We remain pos­i­tive on the long-term out­look for fuel cell propul­sion sys­tems in the UAV mar­ket.  How­ev­er, we deter­mined to divest this non-core sys­tems busi­ness giv­en our strate­gic focus on the Heavy- and Medi­um-Duty Motive mar­kets of bus, truck, train and marine, where we expect scaled com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion and growth through 2030 and beyond.

“We believe the UAV busi­ness will be best posi­tioned with­in the Hon­ey­well enter­prise and look for­ward to our ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with Hon­ey­well and grow­ing the excit­ing busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties for a range of urban air mobil­i­ty and broad­er aero­space appli­ca­tions.”

In June, Hon­ey­well launched a busi­ness ded­i­cat­ed to UAS and Urban Air Mobil­i­ty and in Sep­tem­ber, opened a new research and devel­op­ment lab to demon­strate its tech­no­log­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties in both hard­ware and soft­ware for the UAS and Urban Air Mobil­i­ty mar­kets.