Ampaire is relocating its headquarters from Hawthorne, California, to a larger facility at Long Beach Airport as the electric aviation company expands its research and development activities. The hybrid-electric propulsion pioneer held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at its new Long Beach headquarters on August 27.
“This facility will not only be the heart of our operations but also a hub for innovation, where we will continue to develop and deploy cutting-edge electric aircraft technologies,” said Ampaire CEO Kevin Noertker. “Our new location strengthens our commitment to sustainability and our mission to lead the aviation industry into a new era of eco-friendly flight.”
Since 2019, Ampaire has been developing hybrid-electric powertrains from its main base at Los Angeles-area Hawthorne Municipal Airport. The company’s three founders started working together out of a garage in Temecula, a town in Southern California, in 2016. They relocated to Los Angeles’s Clean Tech Incubator in 2017 before opening the hub in Hawthorne.
Having outgrown its space in Hawthorne, Ampaire announced in June that it would open new headquarters at Long Beach Airport. The new facility offers 20% more office space and 140% more hangar space.
Ampaire is working to convert existing aircraft such as the Cessna 208B Grand Caravan and the de Havilland Twin Otter to hybrid-electric power by retrofitting them with its AMP Drive powertrain, which it says will deliver up to a 70% reduction in fuel burn and emissions. The company aims to have its first supplemental type certificate for the Eco Caravan in hand by the end of this year.
The Eco Caravan made its first flight in November 2022. Just over one year later, Ampaire claimed the record for the world’s longest flight of a hybrid-electric aircraft in December 2023, when the company flew its Electric EEL technology demonstrator—a Cessna 337 Skymaster modified with a hybrid-electric propulsion system coupled to one of the piston engines—for 12 consecutive hours and 1,400 miles. In February, Ampaire announced it had successfully conducted ground tests with its hybrid-electric powertrain for the turboprop Caravan running on 100 percent sustainable aviation fuel.
Over the past year, Ampaire has been expanding the scope of its electric aviation ambitions beyond hybrid-electric powertrain retrofits to include some unique range-extending innovations. It acquired autonomous aerotow developer Magpie Aviation in March, a move that builds upon its 2023 acquisition of Talyn Air, a start-up that had been developing a dual-vehicle eVTOL concept.
Ampaire’s expanded facility at Long Beach will also support ongoing research the company is working on with NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), both of which have provided funding for Ampaire’s hybrid-electric powertrain development.