XTI TriFan 600: Difficulties of Constructing eVTOL Aircraft

XTI Air­craft is becom­ing a good exam­ple of how dif­fi­cult and chal­leng­ing it is to devel­op and con­struct an eVTOL Air­craft. A recent change in the lead­er­ship team has prompt­ed a fresh approach to pro­duce the company’s Tri­Fan 600, reports futureflight.aero.

First, the Col­orado-based com­pa­ny has opt­ed out of being one of the first to mar­ket in the high­ly com­pet­i­tive Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) sec­tor. In a dra­mat­ic move, XTI has pushed back its pro­posed craft deliv­ery by three years to 2027, allow­ing many com­peti­tors includ­ing Joby, Archer, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space and Eve Air Mobil­i­ty, to over­take it.

Sec­ond, XTI has resolved to press ahead with tur­boshaft engines cer­ti­fied to use 100 per­cent sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fuel (SAF) and defer the intro­duc­tion of full elec­tric propul­sion until lat­er air­craft devel­op­ments.

“XTI’s objec­tives,” says future­flight, “is to read­dress the needs of the busi­ness avi­a­tion sec­tor by get­ting clos­er to the holy grail of com­bin­ing a helicopter’s oper­a­tional flex­i­bil­i­ty with a fixed-wing aircraft’s range, pay­load, and speed, to deliv­er what it calls ‘the miss­ing link’ in air trav­el.”

Dis­tance and range it seems is the new 4–5 pas­sen­ger XTI goal, by offer­ing an VTOL mode of up to 690 miles and in CTOL oper­a­tions via a short run­way, extend­ing up to 860 miles. Top speeds are expect­ed to reach 345 mph.

Michael Hin­der­berg­er

Michael Hin­der­berg­er, CEO of XTI, told future­flight, “When you are look­ing at a range beyond 58 miles, green tech­nol­o­gy doesn’t hold up. So for our longer ranger require­ments, we’re tak­ing a phased approach to achiev­ing zero emis­sions, espe­cial­ly for the demand­ing tak­ing off ver­ti­cal­ly and tran­si­tion­ing to con­ven­tion­al flight.”

He con­tin­ued, “Going all-elec­tric for the Tri­Fan means car­ry­ing a lot of extra weight and there­fore a need for a lot more pow­er. This means design­ing the air­craft just for the first cou­ple of flight min­utes.”

The high­ly expe­ri­enced Hin­der­berg­er appears to be the man behind this rethink, after pre­vi­ous­ly work­ing for super­son­ic air­craft pio­neer Aeri­on and gen­er­al avi­a­tion giants Piper, Hawk­er Beechcraft, and Gulf­stream.

The com­pa­ny had pre­vi­ous­ly been con­sid­er­ing GE’s new Cat­a­lyst engine but con­cludes it requires more pow­er. It is con­fi­dent of find­ing an off-the-shelf solu­tion that should mit­i­gate the tech­nol­o­gy risks around the pro­gram. It has also been in con­tact with French air­craft engine mak­er Safran. Future­flight con­tin­ues, “Though XTI has opt­ed for off-the-shelf tur­boshafts, the process of inte­grat­ing the engine is expect­ed to take a cou­ple of years and will require a new gear­box.”

The arti­cle adds, “The com­pa­ny believes it will take until 2029 to be ready to intro­duce an elec­tric or hybrid-elec­tric ver­sion of the Tri­Fan. It has yet to deter­mine whether this would be based on a hydro­gen or bat­tery-elec­tric pow­er­train, but it has already been work­ing with hydro­gen fuel cell spe­cial­ist HyPoint and has also engaged with hybrid-elec­tric inno­va­tor VerdeGo Aero.”

Hin­der­berg­er com­ment­ed, “We’re not fight­ing to achieve major tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs by intro­duc­ing new engine tech­nol­o­gy at the same time. We’re tak­ing a more con­ser­v­a­tive approach.” He con­tin­ued, “Every­one else [in the AAM sec­tor] seems to be rush­ing and in some cas­es that means forc­ing tech­nol­o­gy before that tech­nol­o­gy is ready.”

The com­pa­ny aims to be ready to com­plete a detailed design review in 2023 and sub­mit a type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion plan to the FAA. It would then build the first of sev­er­al pro­duc­tion con­form­ing pro­to­types in 2024 and be ready to start flight test­ing in 2025, before deliv­er­ies in 2027.

Hin­der­berg­er main­tains the Tri­Fan 600 would be a com­pelling cor­po­rate work­horse, pro­vid­ing con­ve­nient door-to-door trans­porta­tion that should make busi­ness trav­el far more effec­tive. He said, “Think of what we could do for an own­er-oper­a­tor need­ing to make trips between a cou­ple of ware­hous­es 500 miles apart in the South­east [of the U.S.]. We want to com­bine the best of heli­copters and busi­ness jets so that you can take off from back­yards and direct­ly reach off-site loca­tions using exist­ing infra­struc­ture.”

The new planned VTOL mod­el is expect­ed to have direct oper­at­ing costs sim­i­lar to those of a rotor­craft at USD823 per flight hour, but tak­ing half the time result­ing in half the oper­at­ing costs and emis­sions. The use of SAF would reduce emis­sions even fur­ther, accord­ing to the com­pa­ny.

The com­pa­ny says it has logged 315 “pre­orders” for the Tri­Fan 600, which includes a mix of firm pur­chase orders with non-refund­able deposits, options, and reser­va­tions backed by refund­able deposits. XTI’s poten­tial prod­uct roadmap also includes a larg­er Tri­Fan 1200 mod­el as well as an all-elec­tric Tri­Fan 100 and 300 eVTOLs.

Chang­ing the approach of such a major under­tak­ing mid-stream is not only chal­leng­ing, but fraught with poten­tial dif­fi­cul­ty. A lot more cap­i­tal is also required.

Let us see how the Tri­Fan 600 devel­ops from here.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.xtiaircraft.com/

(News Source: https://www.futureflight.aero/)

(Pics: XTI)