Rolls-Royce to cease its electric propulsion business division

Rolls-Royce, the UK-based air­craft engine man­u­fac­tur­er, has report­ed­ly decid­ed to shut down its elec­tric propul­sion unit, Rolls-Royce Elec­tri­cal, after unsuc­cess­ful attempts to sell the busi­ness. 

This deci­sion marks a sig­nif­i­cant shift for the com­pa­ny, which ini­tial­ly announced in Novem­ber 2023 its plans to exit the elec­tric propul­sion sec­tor while seek­ing a buy­er for its elec­tric avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies.

The Rolls-Royce Elec­tri­cal divi­sion had been focused on devel­op­ing propul­sion and pow­er dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems specif­i­cal­ly designed for the grow­ing eVTOL and region­al elec­tric air­craft mar­kets. 

Among its inno­va­tions were three main prod­ucts: the 150 kW elec­tric propul­sion unit (EPU) eVTOL engine, the 320 kW EPU region­al air­craft engine, and an onboard pow­er dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem to sup­port these appli­ca­tions.

Strategic shift

The clo­sure of Rolls-Royce Elec­tri­cal is part of a broad­er strate­gic shift. Dur­ing its Cap­i­tal Mar­kets Day in Novem­ber 2023, the com­pa­ny out­lined a dis­pos­al pro­gramme aimed at rais­ing approx­i­mate­ly $1.20–1.83 bil­lion through asset sales. 

In addi­tion to exit­ing the elec­tric propul­sion mar­ket, Rolls-Royce plans to sell var­i­ous oth­er non-core assets, includ­ing Direct Air Cap­ture tech­nolo­gies and ele­ments of its advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) seg­ment.

In May 2024, Rolls-Royce reached a mutu­al agree­ment with Ver­ti­cal Aero­space to end their part­ner­ship on an elec­tric propul­sion project. 

As part of the agree­ment, Rolls-Royce pro­vid­ed Ver­ti­cal with a finan­cial set­tle­ment, which Ver­ti­cal indi­cat­ed would cov­er the costs of devel­op­ing an alter­na­tive propul­sion solu­tion for its eVTOL air­craft. 

Since then, Ver­ti­cal has been active­ly engag­ing with oth­er poten­tial sup­pli­ers to keep the project on track.

Despite shut­ting down its elec­tric propul­sion unit, Rolls-Royce con­tin­ues to advance its hybrid-elec­tric ambi­tions. 

In Sep­tem­ber 2023, the com­pa­ny suc­cess­ful­ly con­duct­ed the first fuel burn of a new­ly devel­oped small gas tur­bine designed for hybrid-elec­tric flight.

This com­pact and effi­cient tur­bine, cre­at­ed with advanced com­bus­tion tech­nol­o­gy to achieve ultra-low emis­sions, is being inte­grat­ed into a light­weight tur­bo­gen­er­a­tor sys­tem intend­ed for the AAM mar­ket. 

The sys­tem could pow­er eVTOL, elec­tric short take-off and land­ing (eSTOL), and com­muter air­craft with capac­i­ties of up to 19 pas­sen­gers. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, the ver­sa­tile tur­bine holds poten­tial for use in heli­copters, aux­il­iary pow­er units, and var­i­ous defence appli­ca­tions.