VerdeGo Aero to provide its diesel-hybrid powertrain to XTI Aircraft’s TriFan 200 VTOL

VerdeGo Aero will sup­ply its diesel-hybrid (Jet A fuel) pow­er­train to XTI Air­craft’s Tri­Fan 200 VTOL air­craft pro­gramme, as part of a new part­ner­ship between the two com­pa­nies.

The com­pa­ny made avi­a­tion his­to­ry in August when it suc­cess­ful­ly per­formed the first test runs of its ‘Iron Bird’ pro­to­type gen­er­a­tor sys­tem, and last week, com­plet­ed ini­tial tests to val­i­date the sys­tem at out­put lev­els above 150kW.

This ground-based devel­op­ment hard­ware, built around the cer­ti­fied Con­ti­nen­tal CD-265 high effi­cien­cy diesel avi­a­tion engine, is being used for test­ing to refine the weight, pow­er out­put, cool­ing sys­tems, and reli­a­bil­i­ty of the con­for­mal hybrid sys­tems now being engi­neered for aero­space cus­tomers.

The VerdeGo hybrid gen­er­a­tor can be com­bined with bat­tery packs to enable peak pow­er out­put up to 0.5MW and mod­u­lar twin gen­er­a­tor sys­tems can be stacked for 360KW con­tin­u­ous and 1MW peak out­put.

Eric Bartsch, CEO and Co-founder of VerdeGo Aero, said: “XTI’s Tri­Fan 200 is an out­stand­ing appli­ca­tion for VerdeGo’s hybrid pow­er­train sys­tems and we are excit­ed to sup­port XTI as an ear­ly cus­tomer. XTI’s goals to pro­vide its cus­tomers with reli­able, high-per­for­mance car­go air­craft are ide­al­ly matched with the effi­cien­cy and low oper­at­ing cost of VerdeGo’s diesel hybrid pow­er­trains.”

The high effi­cien­cy of VerdeGo’s diesel hybrid gen­er­a­tors is instru­men­tal in reduc­ing emis­sions and fuel burn by 35 per cent, when com­pared to con­ven­tion­al tur­bine pow­er­trains, while also reduc­ing over­all direct oper­at­ing cost by 40 per cent.

Util­is­ing glob­al­ly avail­able Jet‑A fuel means no new infra­struc­ture is nec­es­sary, and air­craft uti­liz­ing VerdeGo’s hybrid sys­tems are ready for the bio­fu­el Jet‑A sub­sti­tutes now under devel­op­ment.

XTI’s Tri­Fan 200 air­craft, which is a con­fig­u­ra­tion sim­i­lar to the larg­er Tri­Fan 600 already under devel­op­ment, will be an unmanned autonomous air­craft capa­ble of trans­port­ing 500lbs of car­go more than 200 nau­ti­cal miles.

The com­pa­ny has also said express logis­tics com­pa­nies will also be able to address ‘miles one to 20’ when ship­ping urgent car­go, by rapid­ly con­nect­ing glob­al air car­go hubs with dis­tri­b­u­tion points through­out major cities.

Robert LaBelle, CEO, XTI Air­craft, said: “The Tri­Fan 200 air­craft will open up a sig­nif­i­cant new mar­ket for XTI to address the needs of car­go and logis­tics oper­a­tors glob­al­ly.

“We are excit­ed to be part­nered with VerdeGo to lever­age their expe­ri­ence with hybrid pow­er­trains com­bined with our expe­ri­ence from the Tri­Fan 600 pro­gram to cre­ate an effi­cient, eco­nom­i­cal, prof­itable VTOL air­craft for fleet oper­a­tors world­wide.”

Sur­face trans­porta­tion in high­ly con­gest­ed glob­al cities can take approx­i­mate­ly 90 to 120 min­utes for urgent car­go to trav­el between air car­go hubs at major air­ports and the city cen­ters. XTI says the Tri­Fan 200 will enable sig­nif­i­cant time to be removed from both ends of the jour­ney, allow­ing lat­er pick­up times and ear­li­er deliv­er­ies.

And in addi­tion to express ship­ping, the Tri­Fan 200 is also applic­a­ble to
longer-range trans­porta­tion in remote loca­tions with­out infra­struc­ture, includ­ing mil­i­tary logis­tics mis­sions.