LaunchPoint announces Hybrid Power System for both aircraft and drones, which includes software for eVTOL aircraft

Launch­Point Elec­tric Propul­sion Solu­tions has announced the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of its patent-pend­ing, hybrid elec­tric pow­er sys­tem for air­craft.

The Hybrid Pow­er Sys­tem (HPS) is a rev­o­lu­tion­ary ecosys­tem of com­plex motor and con­troller hard­ware, plus soft­ware for eVTOL air­craft, that increas­es flight per­for­mance beyond what bat­tery-only or engine-only pow­ered flight can deliv­er. 

It uses a com­bi­na­tion of inter­nal com­bus­tion engine and bat­tery dis­trib­uted dri­ve sys­tem that increas­es pow­er and decreas­es ener­gy stor­age mass.

“Launch­Point HPS is the brawn and brains of a pow­er sys­tem that can be char­ac­terised as the equiv­a­lent of a ‘fly­ing Prius’ with cruise con­trol, opti­mised for vehi­cle range, pay­load, flight/hover time and bat­tery life,” said Rob Reali, LaunchPoint’s Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer.

“Our nov­el arrange­ments of com­po­nent fea­tures and inno­va­tions meet the needs of the emerg­ing AAM mar­ket.”

HPS con­sists of elec­tric motors, gen­er­a­tors, dri­ves, con­trollers, and hybrid elec­tric pow­er man­age­ment units (PMU) designed for pow­er gen­er­a­tion and ful­ly elec­tric and hybrid elec­tric propul­sion appli­ca­tions, designed to sup­port both Par­al­lel and Series hybrid oper­a­tions. 

“We have evolved HPS over twelve years to meet the com­plex­i­ties of demand­ing flight and safe­ty require­ments for AAM and unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems,” added Launch­Point Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer, Mike Ric­ci. 

“The inte­grat­ed electro­mechan­i­cal sys­tem utilis­es our pro­pri­etary Smart­Point con­trol soft­ware to coor­di­nate com­plex, dynam­ic hard­ware com­po­nents, includ­ing engines and prime movers, to intel­li­gent­ly respond to real time sys­tem require­ments. 

“The sys­tem not only solves the prob­lem of reg­u­lat­ing vari­able volt­age sources — such as per­ma­nent mag­net gen­er­a­tors and fuel cells — but also works togeth­er as a micro­grid pow­er man­ag­er to opti­mal­ly use vehi­cle ener­gy resources.” 

Pow­er is rerout­ed to enable reli­able, fault-tol­er­ant flight for cus­tomers that want to run gen­er­a­tors and for those who are look­ing to devel­op pow­er gen­er­a­tion solu­tions. 

HPS has a pow­er range from 1.5–40 kW, while sys­tems for pas­sen­ger and large car­go air mobil­i­ty appli­ca­tions are in the 40–250 kW range. 

Cus­tomised solu­tions are mod­elled with LaunchPoint’s Mod­el­ing Advanced Air­craft Propul­sion (MAAP) pro­pri­etary soft­ware, which opti­mis­es how a pow­er­train or elec­tri­cal pow­er sys­tem is designed.

In addi­tion, the com­pa­ny has made the indi­vid­ual parts of its Hybrid Pow­er Sys­tem avail­able for licens­ing and OEM sales.