Jaunt Air Mobility and VerdeGo Aero to collaborate on hybrid-electric VTOL aircraft

Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty has signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing with VerdeGo Aero to devel­op a hybrid-elec­tric ver­sion of its eVTOL air­craft.

Both com­pa­nies plan to work togeth­er and utilise Verde­Go’s hybrid-elec­tric diesel (Jet‑A) gen­er­a­tor sys­tem, com­bined with the same bat­tery sys­tems being used for Jaun­t’s air­craft — the Jaunt Jour­ney.

Jaunt’s patent­ed tech­nol­o­gy offers a proven aero­dy­nam­ic design of a fixed-wing air­craft with effi­cient VTOL capa­bil­i­ties. While VerdeGo’s hybrid pow­er sys­tem allows for longer mis­sions, faster turn­around oper­a­tions, and cur­rent infra­struc­ture util­i­sa­tion.

The added ener­gy from the hybrid sys­tem will also enable sig­nif­i­cant enhance­ments to mis­sion capa­bil­i­ty for pas­sen­ger, car­go, and mil­i­tary vari­ants.

Mar­tin Peryea, CEO of Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty, said: “While con­fi­dent in the bat­tery-elec­tric Jaunt Jour­ney, for the urban air mobil­i­ty mar­ket, our cus­tomers also have dif­fer­ent oper­a­tional mis­sion require­ments. VerdeGo’s sys­tem offers a unique bridge to meet­ing those demands.”

This lat­est announce­ment increas­es VerdeGo Aero’s influ­ence in the mar­ket, after also sign­ing sim­i­lar agree­ments with both Airflow.aero and XTI Air­craft.

VerdeGo’s hybrid pow­er sys­tems run on glob­al­ly-avail­able Jet‑A fuel, which will reduce fuel con­sump­tion and CO2 emis­sions by 40 per cent when com­pared to com­pet­ing tur­bine prod­ucts, while pro­vid­ing four times more ener­gy than bat­tery-elec­tric pow­er­trains.

Accord­ing to NASA, Hybrid-elec­tric archi­tec­tures have shown the poten­tial for sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments when applied to fixed-wing air­craft; such improve­ments include ener­gy con­sump­tion, noise, weight, propul­sive effi­cien­cy, and aero-propul­sive inter­ac­tions, among oth­ers.

The U.S. Air Force’s chief acqui­si­tion offi­cer, Dr. Will Rop­er stat­ed that with the military’s goals of fly­ing two to four mil­i­tary per­son­nel 100 miles at speeds above 115 mph, it is like­ly that these air­craft will be hybrid-elec­tric.

Eric Bartsch, VerdeGo Aero’s CEO, added: “The addi­tion­al range enabled with VerdeGo’s hybrid sys­tem applied in the Jaunt air­craft will enable either longer mis­sions or mul­ti­ple short back-to-back mis­sions, with­out the require­ment for ener­gy infra­struc­ture at every land­ing site.

“Rapid turn­around, high util­i­sa­tion, and enhanced mis­sion capa­bil­i­ty make the hybrid air­craft extreme­ly com­pet­i­tive.”