Rolls-Royce to work with Luxaviation Group on network of vertiports for eVTOL aircraft

Rolls-Royce is to col­lab­o­rate on the devel­op­ment of a planned net­work of ver­ti­ports with Lux­avi­a­tion Group, which will include elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and dig­i­tal solu­tions and main­te­nance sup­port ser­vices.

Lux­avi­a­tion already has a pres­ence at more than 120 VIP ter­mi­nals across the world. Both com­pa­nies share a vision of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty solu­tions, includ­ing all-elec­tric and hybrid-elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing as well as fixed-wing com­muter air­craft.

The Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing between Rolls-Royce Elec­tri­cal, Rolls-Royce Pow­er Sys­tems and Lux­avi­a­tion focus­es on oper­a­tions, ver­ti­ports and sur­round­ing infra­struc­ture to sup­port these excit­ing new mar­kets that will trans­form the way we trav­el. The strate­gic part­ner­ship will look at three main areas:

• Charg­ing and ener­gy infra­struc­ture for ver­ti­ports
• Main­te­nance pro­vi­sion for elec­tric air­craft
• Dig­i­tal solu­tions for relat­ed appli­ca­tions across AAM

Rob Wat­son, Pres­i­dent of Rolls Royce Elec­tri­cal, said: “Rolls-Royce will be the lead­ing provider of all-elec­tric and hybrid-elec­tric pow­er and propul­sion sys­tems for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty. As part of our strat­e­gy, we are look­ing to ensure we under­stand how we can deliv­er main­te­nance and ser­vices for these new air­craft build­ing on our exist­ing MRO and ana­lyt­ics capa­bil­i­ties.

“We are delight­ed to col­lab­o­rate with Lux­avi­a­tion, who we believe will be a lead­ing play­er in the AAM indus­try and that this col­lab­o­ra­tion will help both part­ners to be at the fore­front of this new mar­ket.”

Last year, Rolls-Royce announced a path­way to net zero car­bon emis­sions and its elec­tri­cal tech­nol­o­gy is one way in which the com­pa­ny is help­ing decar­bonise crit­i­cal parts of the glob­al econ­o­my. Rolls-Royce is com­mit­ted to ensur­ing its new prod­ucts will be com­pat­i­ble with net zero oper­a­tion by 2030 and all its prod­ucts will be com­pat­i­ble with net zero by 2050.

Andreas Schell, CEO Rolls-Royce Pow­er Sys­tems, added: “Rolls-Royce will offer inte­grat­ed solu­tions from a sin­gle source across its busi­ness units. Pow­er Sys­tems can already sup­ply cli­mate-friend­ly micro­grids that com­bine renew­able ener­gy sources, bat­tery stor­age and con­ven­tion­al pow­er gen­er­a­tion. Soon we will also offer them with fuel cell gen­er­a­tors, hydro­gen engines and elec­trol­y­sers. This is anoth­er demon­stra­tion of how Rolls-Royce is help­ing make avi­a­tion more sus­tain­able.”

With over 60 years of expe­ri­ence in oper­a­tions, Fixed Based Oper­a­tor (FBO) pas­sen­ger ser­vices and hun­dreds of air­craft under man­age­ment, Lux­avi­a­tion Group has launched var­i­ous projects pro­mot­ing the future of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty. The first deliv­er­able of this part­ner­ship will be the cre­ation and imple­men­ta­tion of a pilot project out­lin­ing elec­tri­cal solu­tions.

Christophe Lapierre, Luxaviation’s Head of strat­e­gy and Pres­i­dent Busi­ness Avi­a­tion Sup­port Ser­vices said: “We are con­vinced that Rolls-Royce and Lux­avi­a­tion, two mar­ket lead­ers with a glob­al net­work, tal­ent, exper­tise, and vision across entire val­ue chain will accel­er­ate the deploy­ment of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty through this strate­gic part­ner­ship.

“Our com­mon vision to enable ear­ly adop­tion by lever­ag­ing exist­ing capa­bil­i­ties places this part­ner­ship at an advanced posi­tion, con­sid­er­ably push­ing the evo­lu­tion of this new indus­try seg­ment. Our con­cept is to pro­vide a solu­tion that is agile and in con­tin­u­ous evo­lu­tion to scale up Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions along­side reg­u­la­to­ry devel­op­ment pace and mar­ket demand.”

You can watch Ste­fan Bre­unig, Head of Strat­e­gy at Rolls-Royce Elec­tri­cal, deliv­er a pre­sen­ta­tion about the com­pa­ny’s role in the advanced air mobil­i­ty mar­ket at our ‘Final Fri­day’ vir­tu­al net­work­ing event which took place on Jan­u­ary 28th. To watch the record­ing, click here.