“VerdeGo Aero Awarded USD9.7 Million by USAF for Developing VH-4T Hybrid-Electric Powerplant” 

U.S‑based VerdeGo Aero has been award­ed a USD9.7 mil­lion Small Busi­ness Inno­va­tion Research (SBIR) Phase III con­tract with the U.S Air Force (USAF), to devel­op its VH-4T hybrid-elec­tric pow­er­plant into a pro­duc­tion-intent con­fig­u­ra­tion, as well as build and test the first pro­to­type VH-4T-415, reports a press release. 

The award was issued by the Air Force Life Cycle Man­age­ment Cen­tre Mobil­i­ty Direc­torate (AFLCMC/WLM) in coop­er­a­tion with AFWERX, the inno­va­tion branch of the Depart­ment of the Air Force (DAF) and sup­port­ed by the Air Force Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry (AFRL). 

David Eich­st­edt, VP of Prod­uct Man­age­ment for VerdeGo Aero, com­ment­ed, “We have had a strong pos­i­tive response to the VH-4T for both com­mer­cial and mil­i­tary appli­ca­tions.” 

The release explains, “Util­is­ing a Pratt and Whit­ney Cana­da PW207 heli­copter engine, the VH-4T can deliv­er approx­i­mate­ly 400 kW of high-volt­age DC elec­tric­i­ty to pow­er the elec­tric motors in air­craft like eVTOLs and drones using liq­uid fuel rather than bat­ter­ies as the pri­ma­ry ener­gy source.This approach enables elec­tric air­craft to achieve five to ten times more range and endurance than bat­ter­ies alone can pro­vide.”  

Eich­st­edt added, “This increased range and endurance is cru­cial to pro­vid­ing mil­i­tary util­i­ty to these air­craft.”

The VerdeGo Aero team along­side its var­i­ous pow­er­plants

Dave Spitzer, VerdeGo’s VP of Prod­uct Devel­op­ment, remarked, “The first ver­sion of the VH-4T, the 375-kW VH-4T-RD for R&D, was devel­oped around cus­tom-mod­i­fied COTS equip­ment to rapid­ly demon­strate the archi­tec­ture and to sup­port our cus­tomers with pow­er­plants for ground test­ing of iron birds, cop­per birds and lim­it­ed ear­ly flight test­ing. This has proven to be pop­u­lar.” 

He con­tin­ued, “The pro­duc­tion ver­sion we’re devel­op­ing under this Phase III, the 415-kW VH-4T-415, will use bespoke com­po­nents to deliv­er capa­bil­i­ties that are impor­tant for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, includ­ing mul­ti-chan­nel elec­tri­cal pow­er out­put and the abil­i­ty to deliv­er full pow­er over a broad volt­age range.” 

Since being found­ed in 2017, VerdeGo Aero now leads the field of spe­cial­is­ing in advanced hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion tech­nolo­gies. The com­pa­ny is based at the Embry-Rid­dle Aero­nau­ti­cal Uni­ver­si­ty Research Park in Day­tona Beach, Flori­da.

Eric Bartsch, CEO of VerdeGo CEO, con­clud­ed, “This award is a major mile­stone for us. The VH-4T is already in demand and the mon­ey enables us to advance its capa­bil­i­ties for our present cus­tomers and expand its impact across the avi­a­tion indus­try.” 

The 22-month Phase III effort builds upon the dura­bil­i­ty test­ing work VerdeGo Aero per­formed under a pre­vi­ous AFWERX Direct to Phase II award using the VH-4T-RD Research & Devel­op­ment pow­er­plant.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://verdegoaero.com/

afresearchlab.com

afwerx.com

(Top image: VH-4T hybrid-elec­tric pow­er­plant)

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