Kelekona unveils large piloted eVTOL aircraft with 10,000lb payload, capable of carrying 40 passengers

While many eVTOL air­craft devel­op­ers are build­ing two, four and in Lil­i­um’s case — sev­en-seater air­craft — a New York start­up has unveiled its own mod­el which will be capa­ble of trans­port­ing 40 pas­sen­gers.

Kelekona says it will pro­vide a dif­fer­ent class of eVTOL with an approach to mass tran­sit. The mod­el has eight thrust vec­tor­ing fans with vari­able pitch pro­pellers for each stage of flight and has an incred­i­ble pay­load of 10,000lbs (4,540kg).

Speak­ing to eVTOL Insights, Brae­den Kelekona said he found there was a ‘vast oppor­tu­ni­ty’ in late 2015 to scale up this type of tech­nol­o­gy for the avi­a­tion and aero­space sec­tors.

He said: “We decid­ed to start with, in our opin­ion, the most impor­tant part of the air­craft: the bat­tery. We’re all play­ing with the same ener­gy den­si­ty and rel­a­tive­ly using the same cells depend­ing on which lithi­um ion cell you’re using. I’m strict­ly talk­ing about eVTOLs here.

“So we start­ed with the bat­tery and decid­ed to build what’s known as a “fly­ing bat­tery”. We realised it was impor­tant to start with the bat­tery, not cre­ate an inter­est­ing look­ing air­craft and then fig­ure out how to fit a bat­tery inside that air­frame. We set out to build a fly­ing bat­tery and put things on top of that bat­tery pack.

“By doing so, we have a 70 per cent bat­tery to total weight ratio. We’re real­ly hop­ing to hit the 80 per cent mark there but what this allows you to do is very dif­fer­ent from oth­er com­peti­tors in the space. It allows us not only greater ener­gy avail­abil­i­ty, but it gives us greater per­for­mance and endurance.”

For an air­craft of this size, it’s going to need an incred­i­ble amount of pow­er from bat­tery packs. Kelekona says it will be address­ing this by mak­ing its entire bat­tery pack swap­pable, to min­imise turn­around time when fly­ing between cities. A video on its web­site shows the air­craft has a rol­lable sec­tion under­neath to allow for the packs to be replaced in between flights.

Brae­den said: “The sweet spot we’re look­ing at right now is a 3.6 megawatt hour pack, so it’s quite a lot of pow­er and vast­ly dif­fer­ent from any­one else in the space. We real­ly do mean that we took a dif­fer­ent approach by set­ting out to design a fly­ing bat­tery.

“When you break down all the com­po­nents of our air­craft, noth­ing’s nec­es­sar­i­ly new. We’re not here cre­at­ing new cells or a new form of propul­sion; all the tech is very famil­iar to our engi­neers and we feel we’re just pack­ag­ing it all togeth­er in a nov­el way. We use lithi­um ion cells, those cells form bricks and those bricks form mod­ules and which makes up our swap­pable bat­tery pack.

“It was impor­tant for us to be able to min­imise turn­around time and so we decid­ed to build the air­frame on top of that [rol­lable bat­tery pack]. We aim to swap the bat­tery in and out at the same time it takes for pas­sen­gers to board and de-board, which is about five min­utes.”

In terms of achiev­ing long dis­tances, Kelekona says its eVTOL air­craft can make trips from Lon­don to Paris, Los Ange­les to San Fran­cis­co and New York to Wash­ing­ton D.C in an hour. Brae­den added that by uti­liz­ing that swap­pable bat­tery, his com­pa­ny can start mak­ing hub-to-hub flights more acces­si­ble. Exam­ples include Berlin to Frank­furt, Barcelona to Madrid, Munich to Berlin and Oslo to Stock­holm.

A com­bi­na­tion of stereo cam­eras and radar also gives Kelekon­a’s air­craft 100 miles of added envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness for detect-and-avoid oper­a­tions from unknown air­craft, bird­strike, weath­er anom­alies and unchar­tered phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture.

The com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly in its sec­ond round of fund­ing and esti­mat­ed it could begin test flights next year, start­ing off with indoor propul­sion tests and then work­ing with the FAA to do some lim­it­ed range fly­ing out­side.

When asked what impact this type of tech­nol­o­gy can have on the mar­ket, Brae­den said: “What we’re real­ly hop­ing to do by tak­ing the approach of mass tran­sit is bring down the tick­et price, not only for pas­sen­gers but for car­go as well. That’s where we’re main­ly focused, espe­cial­ly with the cur­rent land­scape of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process here in the US with the FAA, which will car­ry over to the EASA and the oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies in Europe.

“We believe that by start­ing with this fly­ing bat­tery approach, we’re able to get more pas­sen­gers on which makes the tick­et price more acces­si­ble. It was impor­tant for us as a New York City start­up to real­ly look at the every­day per­son. I take pub­lic trans­porta­tion and we have an amaz­ing sys­tem here, from our sub­ways to our bus­es, fer­ries and trains.

“Not every­one can afford to trav­el in a two to six-pas­sen­ger air­craft. One of Blade’s main heli­copter routes is from here to the Hamp­tons and the tick­et price can reach about $800. We’re real­ly hop­ing to bring the price down to more in the $85 range, so your aver­age per­son who is pay­ing for a train tick­et could just as eas­i­ly take our air­craft, but at a frac­tion of the time.”

Kelekona already has a planned roadmap to ser­vice, say­ing it hopes to be oper­a­tional by 2024, with Brae­den adding: “I think more than any­thing, it real­ly depends on our rela­tion­ship with FAA as we work close­ly with them to make sure we are meet­ing all the require­ments. But by the end of next year, we hope to start begin­ning our car­go routes. That’s some­thing which is a lot more fea­si­ble in terms of gen­er­at­ing rev­enue in the short term.

“This is some­thing we’re real­ly focused on and excit­ed about. We’re work­ing with a cou­ple of glob­al logis­tics com­pa­nies in the USA and will be test­ing a few routes before we move inter­na­tion­al­ly. Since we have a large pay­load, we’re able to help these cus­tomers stream­line what’s known as “mid-mile cor­ri­dors”, con­nect­ing ware­hous­es or air­port hubs. We can trans­port up to 12 L9N or 24 LD3 con­tain­ers so it’s quite a lot of space. For those who are well versed in this sec­tor, you can real­ly start to see how much of an impact we can make.”

Anoth­er impor­tant indus­try top­ic is infra­struc­ture, and Brae­den has said this is some­thing which is ‘one of the biggest things going for the air­craft’, as it can fit on a nor­mal heli­pad.

“We real­ly want to utilise the air­ports in the USA, as we have so many. The small­er ones are being under­used so being able to fit on a nor­mal apron or heli­pad was impor­tant. We have three heli­pads here in Man­hat­tan alone, and I think the small­est ones are 44ft in diam­e­ter. That real­ly reduces the need for new infra­struc­ture, which is very cost­ly when you com­pare oth­er forms of trans­porta­tion.”

For more infor­ma­tion about Kelekona, vis­it https://www.kelekona.com/

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