Vertical Aerospace Selects Astronics as Low-Voltage Power Distribution Supplier for its Valo eVTOL Aircraft

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has announced a long-term agree­ment with Astron­ics Cor­po­ra­tion to sup­ply the low-volt­age pow­er dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem for Ver­ti­cal’s Valo eVTOL air­craft.

Under the agree­ment, Astron­ics will pro­vide the air­craft’s LV pow­er dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem, includ­ing pow­er con­ver­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion hard­ware that man­ages and pro­tects elec­tri­cal pow­er for crit­i­cal air­craft sys­tems. The sys­tem con­verts high-volt­age elec­tri­cal pow­er from the air­craft’s propul­sion archi­tec­ture into low-volt­age pow­er used by avion­ics, flight con­trols and oth­er essen­tial onboard sys­tems.

Astron­ics has sup­port­ed Ver­ti­cal through­out the pro­to­type phase of air­craft devel­op­ment, with its hard­ware already inte­grat­ed into Ver­ti­cal’s pilot­ed flight test air­craft.

The com­pa­ny’s pur­pose-built eVTOL elec­tri­cal pow­er solu­tions and exten­sive aero­space expe­ri­ence make it the ide­al sup­pli­er for Valo as Ver­ti­cal advances toward cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion.

Stu­art Simp­son, CEO of Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, said: “Build­ing a cer­ti­fi­able air­craft requires not only break­through tech­nol­o­gy, but also a world-class sup­pli­er ecosys­tem. Astron­ics brings deep exper­tise in air­craft elec­tri­cal pow­er sys­tems and has already demon­strat­ed its capa­bil­i­ties through our flight test pro­gramme. This agree­ment is anoth­er impor­tant step as we mature Val­o’s design, strength­en our sup­ply chain and advance toward cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion.”

Astron­ics Cor­po­ra­tionserves the world’s aero­space, defense, and oth­er mis­sion crit­i­cal indus­tries with proven, inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions.

The com­pa­ny works side-by-side with cus­tomers, inte­grat­ing its array of pow­er, con­nec­tiv­i­ty, light­ing, struc­tures, inte­ri­ors, and test tech­nolo­gies to solve com­plex chal­lenges. For over 50 years, Astron­ics has deliv­ered cre­ative, cus­tomer-focused solu­tions with excep­tion­al respon­sive­ness. Today, glob­al air­frame man­u­fac­tur­ers, air­lines, mil­i­taries, com­ple­tion cen­ters and For­tune 500 com­pa­nies rely on the col­lab­o­ra­tive spir­it and inno­va­tion of Astron­ics.

Jon Neal, Pres­i­dent of Astron­ics Advanced Elec­tron­ic Sys­tems, said: Astron­ics is proud to be work­ing with Ver­ti­cal Aero­space as the sup­pli­er of their pow­er dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem for the Valo air­craft. Our Core­Pow­er® sys­tem is pur­pose-built for eVTOL appli­ca­tions, com­bin­ing high-volt­age pow­er con­ver­sion with low-volt­age pow­er dis­tri­b­u­tion deliv­er­ing reli­able, fault-pro­tect­ed pow­er to flight-crit­i­cal sys­tems includ­ing avion­ics, flight con­trols, and nav­i­ga­tion.

“Core­Pow­er was designed from the ground up to meet aero­space cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards, giv­ing our cus­tomers a light­weight, com­pact solu­tion that reduces inte­gra­tion risk and sup­ports their path to type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. We look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing our close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Ver­ti­cal team through CDR and Val­o’s entry into ser­vice.”

This agree­ment fur­ther strength­ens Ver­ti­cal’s sup­pli­er ecosys­tem across Valo’s key air­craft sys­tems, includ­ing lead­ing sup­pli­ers such as Hon­ey­well (flight con­trol and air­craft man­age­ment sys­tems), Aci­tur­ri (air­frame struc­tures), Evoli­to (elec­tric propul­sion units), Hyundai WIA (land­ing gear), Syen­sqo (com­pos­ite mate­ri­als) and Iso­cli­ma (trans­paren­cies).

The announce­ment fol­lows con­tin­ued progress on the Valo pro­gramme as Ver­ti­cal advances toward Crit­i­cal Design Review (CDR), estab­lish­ing the cer­ti­fi­able design base­line for the air­craft ahead of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion-con­form­ing air­craft pro­duc­tion and test­ing.