Ampaire is an American

aircraft manufacturer An aerospace manufacturer is a company or individual involved in the various aspects of designing, building, testing, selling, and maintaining aircraft, aircraft parts, missiles, rockets, or spacecraft. Aerospace is a high technology indust ...

startup based in

Hawthorne, California Hawthorne is a city in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, located in southwestern Los Angeles County, California. It is part of a seventeen-city region commonly called the South Bay. As of the 2020 US census, Hawthorne had a population of 88, ...

History

The company developed the

Electric EEL The electric eels are a genus, ''Electrophorus'', of neotropical freshwater fish from South America in the family Gymnotidae. They are known for their ability to stun their prey by generating electricity, delivering shocks at up to 860 volt ...

, based on a

Cessna 337 Skymaster The Cessna Skymaster is an American twin-engine civil utility aircraft built in a push-pull configuration. Its engines are mounted in the nose and rear of its pod-style fuselage. Twin booms extend aft of the wings to the vertical stabilizers, ...

(a push-pull aircraft) with a piston engine replaced by an electric motor powered by a battery, in a

parallel hybrid Hybrid vehicle drivetrains transmit power to the driving wheels for hybrid vehicles. A hybrid vehicle has multiple forms of motive power. Hybrids come in many configurations. For example, a hybrid may receive its energy by burning gasoline, but sw ...

configuration. The demonstrator first flew on 6 June 2019. In 2020, Scottish regional carrier

Loganair Loganair is a Scottish regional airline based at Glasgow Airport near Paisley, Scotland. It is the largest regional airline in the UK by passenger numbers and fleet size. In addition to its main base at Glasgow, it has hubs at Aberdeen, Edinb ...

trialled the Electric EEL with 70%

fuel savings Fuel efficiency is a form of thermal efficiency, meaning the ratio of effort to result of a process that converts chemical potential energy contained in a carrier ( fuel) into kinetic energy or work. Overall fuel efficiency may vary per device, ...

for short hops and 50% for longer flights of 50-250 miles (80-400km). In February 2021, online booking platform

Surf Air Mobility Surf Air Mobility is an American electric aviation company. It is the parent company of Surf Air and BlackBird Air, and has entered into an agreement to acquire Ampaire, a $100 million acquisition abandoned by April 2022. History Surf Air Mobi ...

attempted to acquire Ampaire but this was abandoned by April 2022. By then, ground tests of its ''Eco Caravan'', an hybrid-electric

Grand Caravan The Chrysler minivans are a series of minivans that have been produced and marketed by the American automaker Chrysler since the 1984 model year. Currently in its sixth generation, the model line is marketed worldwide, primarily in North Americ ...

, were under way, towards a first flight in the second half of 2022 and service entry in 2024, as a retrofit with a STC. The parallel hybrid architecture does not require recharging after each flight, to avoid being dependant on charging infrastructure. Ampaire is considering for 2025 or 2026 a 19-passenger ''Eco Otter SX'' based on the De Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter with four motors instead of two turboprops. Ampaire next step would be a

Dash 8 The De Havilland Canada DHC-8, commonly known as the Dash 8, is a series of turboprop-powered regional airliners, introduced by de Havilland Canada (DHC) in 1984. DHC was later bought by Boeing in 1988, then by Bombardier in 1992; then by ...

ATR ATR may refer to: Medicine * Acute transfusion reaction * Ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3 related, a protein involved in DNA damage repair Science and mathematics * Advanced Test Reactor, nuclear research reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory, ...

type, and ultimately a clean-sheet ''Tailwind'' with a propulsive

ducted fan In aeronautics, a ducted fan is a thrust-generating mechanical fan or propeller mounted within a cylindrical duct or shroud. Other terms include ducted propeller or shrouded propeller. When used in vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) applicati ...

for boundary-layer ingestion. On 18 November 2022, Ampaire flew its Eco-Caravan maiden flight: the

hybrid electric aircraft A hybrid electric aircraft is an aircraft with a hybrid electric powertrain. As the energy density of lithium-ion batteries is much lower than aviation fuel, a hybrid electric powertrain may effectively increase flight range compared to pure electr ...

uses a

RED A03 The RED A03 is a V12 four-stroke aircraft diesel engine designed and built by RED Aircraft GmbH of Adenau, Germany. Development In 2012, its unit cost was . The engine received type approval from the European Aviation Safety Agency in Decem ...

diesel engine to reduce fuel consumption by 70% on shorter trips to 50% on longer ones, retaining the Grand Caravan payload capabilities with range improved to ; supplemental type certificate (STC) is targeted for 2024.

References

External links

*{{Official website, https://www.ampaire.com/ Aircraft manufacturers of the United States Electric aircraft Hybrid electric aircraft