VoltAero’s universal mobile charger for its Cassio electric-hybrid unveiled at last week’s Dubai Airshow

A uni­ver­sal mobile charg­er for VoltAero’s Cas­sio fam­i­ly of elec­tric-hybrid air­planes and oth­er elec­tric air­craft was unveiled by the com­pa­ny at last week’s Dubai Air­show.

Capa­ble of deliv­er­ing ener­gy to recharge the Cas­sio 330 in approx­i­mate­ly 30 min­utes, the charg­er uses a smart com­bi­na­tion of super­ca­pac­i­tors and bat­ter­ies for a pow­er out­put of 100 kw. As part of the unit’s ‘intel­li­gence’, it can be pro­grammed for autonomous deploy­ment to a des­ig­nat­ed loca­tion at an air­port or land­ing zone for air­craft recharg­ing.
 
This intel­li­gent charg­ing unit is part of VoltAero’s strat­e­gy to cre­ate the infra­struc­ture for its Cas­sio air­plane fam­i­ly, which begins with the five-seat Cas­sio 330. The charg­er also will be offered for appli­ca­tions with oth­er e‑aircraft and eVTOLs.
 
Jean Bot­ti, VoltAero’s CEO and Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer, said: “This lat­est devel­op­ment under­scores how VoltAero and its part­ners already are tak­ing steps beyond our devel­op­ment of the break­through Cas­sio fam­i­ly to evolve an opti­mized infra­struc­ture that will sup­port the e‑aircraft sec­tor.”
 
In addi­tion to the intel­li­gent charg­er unit’s world debut at last week’s Dubai Air­show, the VoltAero dis­play in the Dubai World Cen­ter includ­ed Kawasa­ki Motors’ four-cylin­der and six-cylin­der inter­nal com­bus­tion engines for the Cas­sio aircraft’s elec­tric-hybrid propul­sion mod­ule.

These engines will be able to oper­ate with hydro­gen, with VoltAero tar­get­ing a Cas­sio 330 elec­tric-hydro­gen demon­stra­tor for 2025.
 
VoltAero’s Cas­sio fam­i­ly will be a high­ly capa­ble and reli­able air­craft prod­uct line for region­al com­mer­cial oper­a­tors, air taxi/charter com­pa­nies, pri­vate own­ers, as well as in util­i­ty-cat­e­go­ry ser­vice for car­go, postal deliv­ery and med­ical evac­u­a­tion (Mede­vac) appli­ca­tions.
 
 Cas­sio air­craft will utilise an elec­tric motor in the aft fuse­lage-mount­ed hybrid propul­sion unit for all-elec­tric pow­er dur­ing taxi, take­off, pri­ma­ry flight — if the dis­tance trav­eled is less than 150 km — and land­ing.

The hybrid fea­ture – with the 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.