VoltAero selects Avidyne for customised avionics on Cassio 330 electric-hybrid aircraft

VoltAero yes­ter­day con­firmed its selec­tion of Avi­dyne for the devel­op­ment of avion­ics to equip the Cas­sio 330, which includes cus­tomised soft­ware specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored for elec­tric-hybrid oper­a­tions.

The Cas­sio 330 will be equipped with a glass cock­pit incor­po­rat­ing Avidyne’s new-gen­er­a­tion Quan­tum 14-inch dis­plays in a dual pri­ma­ry flight dis­play/­mul­ti-func­tion dis­play con­fig­u­ra­tion. Quan­tum dis­plays pro­vide bright­ness and syn­thet­ic vision sys­tem at 4K res­o­lu­tion, as well as proces­sor per­for­mance improve­ments over lega­cy sys­tems.

Avi­dyne will cus­tomise the avion­ics’ human-machine inter­face specif­i­cal­ly for the Cas­sio 330’s flight oper­a­tions, facil­i­tat­ing the pilot work­load while man­ag­ing the aircraft’s elec­tric-hybrid propul­sion sys­tem. By accu­mu­lat­ing and pro­cess­ing all air­craft infor­ma­tion, the avion­ics suite will sim­pli­fy the pilot’s deci­sion-mak­ing process, as well as improve flight safe­ty and pilot train­ing.

“Our exclu­sive agree­ment with Avi­dyne ensures that Cassio’s avion­ics are just as advanced, inno­v­a­tive and capa­ble for the future oper­a­tors,” said Jean Bot­ti, VoltAero’s CEO and Chief Tech­ni­cal Offi­cer.

The Avi­dyne Cor­po­ra­tion is a mar­ket leader in the design and man­u­fac­tur­ing of inte­grat­ed avion­ics sys­tems for the avi­a­tion com­mu­ni­ty. All its prod­ucts are designed and man­u­fac­tured in the US, with the company’s head­quar­ters in Mel­bourne, Flori­da.

Avi­dyne Pres­i­dent Dan Schwinn stat­ed: “The Quan­tum open avion­ics plat­form has been specif­i­cal­ly devel­oped to meet the unique require­ments of the next gen­er­a­tion of hybrid air­craft, and is well aligned to sup­port Cas­sio 300’s advanced hybrid elec­tric sys­tems and air­craft mis­sions.”

The Cas­sio 330 is the first of three Cas­sio air­craft ver­sions to be devel­oped by VoltAero for seat­ing capac­i­ties of up to 12 per­sons. VoltAero unveiled its first Cas­sio 330 pro­to­type at last week’s Paris Air Show, where Avydine’s Quan­tum avion­ics suite was shown for the first time, incor­po­rat­ed in VoltAero’s full-scale Cas­sio 330 cab­in mock­up on its exhib­it stand.

Designed with a five-seat cab­in, the Cas­sio 330 will be pow­ered by a 330-kilo­watt elec­tric-hybrid propul­sion sys­tem. The fol­low-on six-seat Cas­sio 480 will have propul­sion of 480 kilo­watts, while the Cas­sio 600 is sized at a 12-seat capac­i­ty with elec­tric-hybrid propul­sion pow­er of 600 kilo­watts.

VoltAero uses elec­tric motors in the aft fuse­lage-mount­ed hybrid propul­sion unit for all-elec­tric pow­er dur­ing taxi, take­off, pri­ma­ry flight if the dis­tance trav­elled is less than 150 km, and land­ing. The hybrid inter­nal com­bus­tion engine comes into play as a range exten­der, recharg­ing the bat­ter­ies while in flight.

Addi­tion­al­ly, this hybrid ele­ment serves as a back­up in the event of a prob­lem with the elec­tric propul­sion, ensur­ing true fail-safe func­tion­al­i­ty. In addi­tion, it has the capa­bil­i­ty to use sus­tain­able fuels, includ­ing bio­fu­el and hydro­gen. VoltAero will assem­ble the Cas­sio air­craft in a pur­pose-built facil­i­ty at the Rochefort Char­ente-Mar­itime Air­port in France’s Nou­velle-Aquitaine region.