Vertical Aerospace and Molicel partner to power VX4 eVTOL aircraft

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has select­ed E‑One Moli Ener­gy Corp (Moli­cel), a leader in high-pow­er lithi­um-ion cells, to pro­vide high-per­for­mance bat­tery cells for the VX4 eVTOL air­craft.

The part­ner­ship will com­bine Molicel’s lead­ing cell tech­nol­o­gy in high pow­er, low imped­ance and fast charge with Vertical’s pro­pri­etary bat­tery pack to sup­ply high pow­er cylin­dri­cal cells for the VX4.

Moli­cel tech­nol­o­gy is already in use across space, advanced auto­mo­tive and pow­er tool appli­ca­tions, with part­ners includ­ing NASA and William’s Advanced Engi­neer­ing.

Part of Vertical’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion com­pli­ance jour­ney is prov­ing the man­age­ment of ther­mal run­away events as the VX4 needs high-per­for­mance cells to enable the range and pay­load its cus­tomers demand.

Ver­ti­cal and Moli­cel have estab­lished a joint work­ing group to ensure the bat­tery cells result in a sys­tem for the VX4 to be cer­ti­fied con­cur­rent­ly with the Euro­pean Union’s Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) and the UK’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA), for entry into ser­vice in 2025.

In addi­tion to its exist­ing pro­duc­tion annu­al capac­i­ty of 1.6 GWh in Taipei, Moli­cel will open its sec­ond Gigafac­to­ry in Kaoh­si­ung, Tai­wan in 2023 with a capac­i­ty of 2 GWh, while its cell trace­abil­i­ty approach will meet aero­space stan­dards.

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space founder & CEO Stephen Fitz­patrick said: “The future of elec­tric avi­a­tion is depen­dent on safe, high-per­for­mance bat­tery sys­tems and fun­da­men­tal to this is the bat­tery cells them­selves.

“Moli­cel has a rich his­to­ry of inno­va­tion and push­ing the bound­aries of what is pos­si­ble in ener­gy stor­age, and we couldn’t think of a bet­ter part­ner to bring the VX4 to mar­ket.”

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space bat­tery head Dr Limhi Somerville added: “It has been a priv­i­lege to work along­side Moli­cel in test­ing, eval­u­at­ing and analysing its lithi­um-ion cells here and in Tai­wan.

“Through years of devel­op­ment, these low resis­tance, high-pow­er cells give us addi­tion­al weight sav­ing, charg­ing and safe­ty oppor­tu­ni­ties for the VX4 with min­i­mal com­pro­mise to ener­gy and life­time.”

Moli­cel pres­i­dent Casey Shi­ue con­tin­ued: “We have long been known as the pio­neers of high pow­er, low imped­ance, fast charge bat­tery cell tech­nol­o­gy and we are on a mis­sion to pro­duce out­stand­ing cells to dri­ve the elec­tric evo­lu­tion.

“We Look for­ward to work­ing with Ver­ti­cal Aero­space to bring its rev­o­lu­tion­ary VX4 to the skies.”

In April, EASA agreed to con­cur­rent­ly val­i­date the UK CAA’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the VX4 against strin­gent safe­ty stan­dards.

Before that in Feb­ru­ary, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space agreed a joint devel­op­ment pro­gramme with Leonar­do for the design, test­ing, man­u­fac­ture and sup­ply of the car­bon com­pos­ite fuse­lage for the VX4.