VoltAero reveals its aviation vision with the Cassio hybrid-electric aircraft

VoltAero has revealed the pro­duc­tion con­fig­u­ra­tion for its Cas­sio hybrid-elec­tric air­craft, which the com­pa­ny says will ‘rev­o­lu­tionise gen­er­al avi­a­tion with a high­ly effi­cient, safe and opti­mised fam­i­ly of air­craft’.

In an announce­ment last week, the French man­u­fac­tur­er said the Cas­sio will be tai­lored for oper­a­tion by pri­vate own­ers, air taxi/charter com­pa­nies, in com­mer­cial flights for point-to-point region­al trav­el and in var­i­ous util­i­ty-cat­e­go­ry appli­ca­tions.

An ini­tial tar­get for deliv­er­ies has been set for 2022, begin­ning with the Cas­sio 330, a four-seat con­fig­u­ra­tion with propul­sion from a com­bined hybrid-elec­tric pow­er of 330 kilo­watts.

Jean Bot­ti, VoltAero’s CEO and Chief Tech­ni­cal Offi­cer, said: “The Cas­sio pro­duc­tion design’s unveil­ing rep­re­sents the lat­est step in our real­is­tic and high­ly prag­mat­ic cre­ation of an all-new air­craft fam­i­ly.

“It ben­e­fits from our team’s unmatched expe­ri­ence in hybrid-elec­tric avi­a­tion, as well as the ongo­ing full-scale flight test­ing that removes the risk as we move toward the pro­duc­tion phase.”

Man­u­fac­tured at a pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in Nou­velle Aquitaine region of south­west France, VoltAero’s pro­pri­etary Cas­sio design is based on a sleek, aero­dy­nam­i­cal­ly-opti­mised fuse­lage, a for­ward fixed canard, and an aft-set wing with twin booms that sup­port a high-set hor­i­zon­tal tail.

The air­craft will utilise VoltAero’s hybrid-elec­tric pow­er mod­ule in an aft fuse­lage ‘push­er’ con­fig­u­ra­tion, inte­grat­ing a clus­ter of elec­tric motors with a high-per­for­mance inter­nal com­bus­tion engine that serves as the range exten­der.

The pow­er­train cur­rent­ly is being val­i­dat­ed on VoltAero’s Cas­sio 1 flight test air­craft, to ensure a high lev­el of matu­ri­ty for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and pro­duc­tion.

As well as the Cas­sio 330, the air­craft will be offered in two oth­er ver­sions:

• Cas­sio 480, con­fig­ured with six seats and a hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion pow­er of 480 kilo­watts
• Cas­sio 600, with a 10-seat capac­i­ty and hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion pow­er of 600 kilo­watts

Licensed pro­duc­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties will be pur­sued in North Amer­i­ca and Asia, while Cas­sio will be cer­ti­fied to Europe’s EASA CS23 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion spec­i­fi­ca­tion as a sin­gle-engine, gen­er­al avi­a­tion cat­e­go­ry air­craft.