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 industry. ...

startup based in

Hawthorne, California Hawthorne is a city in southwestern Los Angeles County, California. It is part of a seventeen-city subregion of the Los Angeles metropolitan area commonly known as the South Bay (Los Angeles County), South Bay. As of the 2020 United States cens ...

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, of which they are the only members of the subfamily Electrophorinae. They are known for their electric fish, ability ...

, 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, and can come in many configurations. For example, a hybrid may receive its energy by burning gasoline, but swi ...

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

Loganair Loganair is a Scottish regional airline headquartered at Glasgow Airport in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland. The airline primarily operates domestic flights within the United Kingdom. It is the largest regional airline in Scotland by passenger ...

trialled the Electric EEL with 70%

fuel savings Fuel efficiency (or fuel economy) 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 ...

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

Surf Air Mobility Surf Air Mobility Inc. is an American aviation company focused on Regional airline, regional flying. The company plans to develop Electric aircraft, electric and Hybrid electric aircraft, hybrid powertrains to upgrade existing aircraft. Surf Air ...

attempted to acquire Ampaire, but this was abandoned by April 2022. By then, ground tests of its ''Eco Caravan'', a hybrid-electric Grand Caravan, 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 dependent 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 The de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter is a Canadian STOL (Short Takeoff and Landing) utility aircraft developed by de Havilland Canada in the mid-1960s and still in production today. Built by De Havilland Canada from 1965 to 1988, Viking ...

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 bought by Boeing in 1986, then by Bombardier in 1992, then by Longv ...

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 (aeronautics), propeller mounted within a cylindrical wiktionary:duct, duct or shroud. Other terms include ducted propeller or shrouded propeller. When used in vertic ...

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 vehicle, 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 rang ...

uses a RED A03 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 A supplemental type certificate (STC) is a civil aviation authority-approved major modification or repair to an existing type certified aircraft, engine or propeller. As it adds to the existing type certificate, it is deemed "supplemental". In ...

(STC) is targeted for 2024. The smaller AMP-H270 powertrain uses a

DeltaHawk DH180 The DH180 is V-4 piston diesel aircraft engine developed for aircraft applications by DeltaHawk of Racine, Wisconsin. The engine was type certified on April 7, 2023. Design The design is a four-cylinder, two-stroke, piston diesel engine, ...

diesel engine, providing a 45% cruise efficiency gain over a conventional combustion engine and double the efficiency of comparable gas turbines.

References

External links

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