PODCAST RECAP: Turning Wasted Energy into Lift: How Flight Kinetics Aims to Extend eVTOL Range

In a recent episode of the eVTOL Insights pod­cast, Jason Pritchard spoke with Lester Erl­ston, founder of Flight Kinet­ics, about the company’s mis­sion to tack­le one of the most per­sis­tent chal­lenges in Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty: ener­gy effi­cien­cy.

Flight Kinet­ics is devel­op­ing an aero­dy­nam­ic tech­nol­o­gy known as Prop­Wings, designed to enable elec­tric and hybrid-elec­tric air­craft to fly fur­ther, car­ry heav­ier pay­loads, and oper­ate with greater safety—without requir­ing advances in bat­tery chem­istry.

Erl­ston said: “Our mis­sion is to pro­vide a crit­i­cal, air­frame-neu­tral tech­nol­o­gy that makes advanced air mobil­i­ty more eco­nom­i­cal­ly viable, allow­ing air­craft to fly fur­ther, car­ry heav­ier loads, and opti­mise safe­ty with­in exist­ing ener­gy con­straints.”

Flight Kinet­ics posi­tions itself as a high-lift, ener­gy-sav­ing aero­dy­nam­ics com­pa­ny focused square­ly on improv­ing the eco­nom­ic via­bil­i­ty of eVTOL oper­a­tions.

Erl­ston explained that while much of the indus­try is con­strained by cur­rent bat­tery per­for­mance, a sig­nif­i­cant amount of ener­gy is already being wast­ed aero­dy­nam­i­cal­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly in pro­peller slip­stream dur­ing high-thrust phas­es such as the tran­si­tion from ver­ti­cal to for­ward flight.

He added: “The promise of eVTOLs is cur­rent­ly con­strained by bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy and aero­dy­nam­ic effi­cien­cy. We noticed that pro­peller slip­stream ener­gy is wast­ed when­ev­er the air­craft is in for­ward flight, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing high-thrust tran­si­tions from ver­ti­cal to for­ward flight.

“Prop­Wings uses the ener­gy already expend­ed by the motors and pro­pellers to gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased lift, par­tic­u­lar­ly at high motor thrust and slow for­ward air­speeds. “We effec­tive­ly har­vest wast­ed slip­stream ener­gy and con­vert it direct­ly into extend­ed oper­a­tional range.”

Erl­ston not­ed that the sys­tem may also reduce rota­tion­al ener­gy loss­es in the pro­peller wake, poten­tial­ly increas­ing propul­sive effi­cien­cy fur­ther. Impor­tant­ly, these gains are addi­tive to any future bat­tery improve­ments OEMs may adopt

He added: “Most oth­er solu­tions focus on incre­men­tal improve­ments in bat­tery ener­gy den­si­ty. We address the chal­lenge from a unique aero­dy­nam­ic per­spec­tive.”

“Our sys­tem doesn’t require wait­ing for the next gen­er­a­tion of bat­tery chem­istry, it max­imis­es the ener­gy we already have.”

Since its found­ing, Flight Kinet­ics has focused on pro­tect­ing its intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and refin­ing its go-to-mar­ket strat­e­gy. The com­pa­ny is pur­su­ing a tech­nol­o­gy licens­ing mod­el, aim­ing to become a tier-one aero­dy­nam­ic tech­nol­o­gy part­ner to eVTOL OEMs rather than a hard­ware man­u­fac­tur­er.

This air­frame-neu­tral approach is intend­ed to make the solu­tion adapt­able across a wide range of air­craft con­fig­u­ra­tions, allow­ing mul­ti­ple man­u­fac­tur­ers to inte­grate the tech­nol­o­gy with­out sig­nif­i­cant redesigns.

Erl­ston said: “We see our­selves as a tier-one tech­nol­o­gy licen­sor, pro­vid­ing pro­pri­etary aero­dy­nam­ic exper­tise direct­ly inte­grat­ed into eVTOL air­frames.

“By licens­ing our tech­nol­o­gy rather than man­u­fac­tur­ing com­po­nents, we can part­ner flex­i­bly with mul­ti­ple OEMs.”

On the tech­ni­cal front, Erl­ston acknowl­edged the chal­lenges of devel­op­ing a robust and wide­ly com­pat­i­ble sys­tem, high­light­ing the impor­tance of com­pu­ta­tion­al val­i­da­tion and exter­nal expert review.

The company’s progress has been sup­port­ed by pre­lim­i­nary assess­ments from two major US aero­space firms, as well as tech­ni­cal endorse­ment from Pro­fes­sor Robert Briden­thal of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Washington’s Boe­ing Depart­ment of Aero­nau­tics. Most recent­ly, Flight Kinet­ics has final­ized the engi­neer­ing frame­work for advanced CFD val­i­da­tion, mark­ing a key mile­stone on its path toward phys­i­cal test­ing and flight val­i­da­tion

Look­ing ahead, Flight Kinet­ics is cur­rent­ly rais­ing cap­i­tal to fund CFD, wind tun­nel, and even­tu­al flight testing—steps Erl­ston described as crit­i­cal to de-risk­ing the tech­nol­o­gy and unlock­ing com­mer­cial licens­ing agree­ments.

Suc­cess­ful val­i­da­tion would allow OEMs to pre­cise­ly quan­ti­fy gains in range and use­ful load, per­for­mance met­rics essen­tial for mar­ket accep­tance. Ulti­mate­ly, Erl­ston believes Prop­Wings could help bridge the gap between today’s eVTOL capa­bil­i­ties and the require­ments for prof­itable, scal­able operations—extending advanced air mobil­i­ty beyond short urban hops and into longer-range region­al ser­vices

He con­clud­ed: “Prop­Wings has the poten­tial to become a stan­dard tech­nol­o­gy on next-gen­er­a­tion eVTOLs. The indus­try will be able to launch com­mer­cial ser­vices with a clear path to prof­itabil­i­ty.

“We’re at an excit­ing point where dig­i­tal val­i­da­tion tran­si­tions into phys­i­cal per­for­mance and mea­sur­able mar­ket impact.”

You can lis­ten to the full episode, you can head to the Pod­cast sec­tion of our web­site or search for the eVTOL Insights Pod­cast on whichev­er pod­cast plat­form you use.