Urban Aeronautics secures first $10 million in funding to help fuel technology behind its hydrogen-powered CityHawk eVTOL aircraft

Urban Aero­nau­tics, the Israel-based aero­space com­pa­ny behind the City­Hawk VTOL air­craft has announced it has secured the first $10 mil­lion towards their next round, which will help fund the tech­nol­o­gy to pow­er the hydro­gen-fuelled mod­el.

The added funds from this round, which includ­ed pri­vate investors from Brazil, Israel and the USA, come after the lat­est suc­cess­ful test flights for the com­pa­ny’s tech demon­stra­tor in ear­ly July. They show­cased the CityHawk’s capa­bil­i­ties for smooth ver­ti­cal take­off, land­ing, and short-dis­tance flight in wind con­di­tions, a key step on the path to com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion for inner-city air trav­el.

Urban Aero­nau­tics CEO Nim­rod Golan-Yanay, said: “The Urban Aero­nau­tics team has for­mi­da­ble expe­ri­ence in aero­space engi­neer­ing, avi­a­tion devel­op­ment, and bring­ing emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy prod­ucts to mar­ket.

“While we know that the vig­or­ous test­ing and reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance that comes with any new avi­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy is still in devel­op­ment across the globe, we are extreme­ly excit­ed and bol­stered by the mile­stones we’ve achieved in recent months that show how ide­al­ly suit­ed City­Hawk is for prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions right with­in the city itself.”

The com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly look­ing to raise a Series A round of at least $100 mil­lion and to-date, has com­plet­ed more than 300 suc­cess­ful test flights of its 2,400lb pro­to­type, which has been in devel­op­ment since 2006. The com­pa­ny has said it is com­mit­ted to 100 per cent hydro­gen pow­er for its entire prod­uct line, and its team has over 400 years com­bined avi­a­tion expe­ri­ence.

Under the new lead­er­ship of Golan-Yanay, who become CEO in Octo­ber 2020, Urban Aero­nau­tics has achieved sev­er­al mile­stones in the past year. These include a part­ner­ship with HyPoint to adapt hydro­gen fuel-cell tech­nol­o­gy for avi­a­tion, a pre-order with Hat­zo­lah Air for four City­Hawk eVTOL air­craft to be used as air ambu­lances and an impact study agree­ment with Sky­ports, to study the infra­struc­ture need­ed for ver­ti­ports in major urban hubs in the Mid­dle East. This also includes how ver­ti­ports can be designed to sup­port a hydro­gen-fuelled air fleet.

The City­Hawk is a car-sized eVTOL air­craft designed for mul­ti­ple trips with­in a city per day with zero emis­sions and min­i­mal noise. It is intend­ed for com­mer­cial air char­ters and emer­gency med­ical ser­vices (EMS) and will be pilot­ing, car­ry­ing four pas­sen­gers.

It will have a max­i­mum range of about 150 miles which includes reserves, and a cruise speed of 130kts. In terms of noise, Urban Aero­nau­tics says the City­Hawk will have a pro­jec­tion of 70dBA at 700ft.

As part of the City­Hawk is the Fan­craft™ Sys­tem, which is a dis­tinct, wing­less exte­ri­or and patent­ed ful­ly-enclosed rotor sys­tem. Urban Aero­nau­tics says it is intrin­si­cal­ly safer and qui­eter than exposed rotors, with guid­ing vanes to pro­vide max­i­mum sta­bil­i­ty in hov­er mode. The sys­tem will be pow­ered by elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed from hydro­gen fuel cells, while a stream­lined con­trol sys­tem and 360° sen­sors allow for sim­pli­fied pilot­ing and safer flights.

The planned roadmap of the City­Hawk will see the first pro­duc­tion pro­to­types ready by 2024, with cer­ti­fi­ca­tion com­ple­tion and ini­tial deliv­er­ies and com­mer­cial flights start­ing in 2026. The hydro­gen vari­ant type cer­tifi­cate is planned for 2030.