As the first manufacturer of a certified electric aircraft—the Pipistrel Velis Electro—Textron eAviation is refocusing resources on bringing new aircraft to market and improving existing aircraft while pausing progress on its eVTOL program. The Nexus eVTOL, a four-passenger, single-pilot aircraft designed to fly up to 100 miles, was expected to achieve first tethered flight this year, but that program, under development at the company’s Glass House facility in Wichita, has been slowed down.
“There will not be a flight this year,” confirmed Kriya Shortt, president and CEO of Textron eAviation. “We’ve taken those Wichita-based engineers and employed them across three primary programs.” This includes the piston-engine Pipistrel Panthera and its EASA CS-23 certification program; the uncrewed, multi-role Pipistrel Nuuva V300 hybrid-electric drone; and integration of Amazilia Aerospace, a German fly-by-wire flight control manufacturer that Textron eAviation acquired in 2024 and renamed Textron eAviation GmbH.
“As part of our continuing development of the next generation of flight, we are exploring additional technology variants of the Nexus eVTOL, ensuring that we align closely with voice of customers and shifting market dynamics,” the company stated.
At the recent EAA AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, eAviation shared a large display with Textron Aviation, showing the Velis Electro, Panthera, Alpha Trainer, and Sinus Max. The Panthera is a high-performance, avgas-burning, single-engine airplane that can cruise at 190 knots while burning 11 gph. Plans call for concurrent FAA validation once the Panthera receives EASA CS-23 certification.
“We have strong market signals that the aircraft is going to do well,” Shortt said. “We have strong performance; it’s an incredibly efficient aircraft. It’s another great example of leveraging the talent. Our Pipistrel team [members] are very well-versed in EASA [certification], but they've never done a Part 23 aircraft [under FAA regulations]. Being able to lean into our engineering colleagues that are Wichita-based provides a nice collaboration to ensure that the product is going to meet the standards and can get into the hands of customers as soon as possible.”
Nuuva V300 Drone is a Priority
The Nuuva V300 multi-role drone is also a primary focus. “We always saw that coming to market before a Nexus,” Shortt said. Textron eAviation GmbH’s fly-by-wire assets in Germany are being deployed on the Nuuva program and also Pipistrel’s Surveyor special mission platform, which is adapted from one of the company’s family of single-engine trainers. This aircraft is available as crewed, UAV, or optionally piloted.
“We plan to vertically integrate and become our own supplier of fly-by-wire [controls],” she said. “It is a crawl-walk-run approach. We can demonstrate the fly-by-wire system on the Surveyor, having delivered an aircraft with that system to a customer in June [Aviatek, a Latin American special mission service provider and system integrator]. Now we’re working on air vehicle number two for the Nuuva, which will also have that system. And we’re already setting requirements with the other business units to ensure that our core system will be complementary to their future needs.”
Any aircraft manufacturer has to decide how to deploy its resources most efficiently, and that is clearly one of the factors in the Nexus One program’s slowdown.
“We’re a small but mighty team,” Shortt said. “So eAviation has about 500 people…what we’re working to do internally is to leverage the talent. A big portion of those 500 folks are engineers, and so how do we think about taking that talent that we have and employing them, not on a geographically specific basis, but more so in a functional basis, so that we can leverage the expertise to be as efficient as possible in bringing aircraft to market.”
As for the Nexus, she added, “That battery technology continues to evolve, and certainly from our perspective, our desire in that space is to bring to market a vehicle that would be multi-mission-capable versus a short-duration urban air mobility product. Understanding where that battery technology sits today, and with the other active programs, we have taken a step back from that to focus and answer the question of what is the right product? That right product is leading us more so towards trade studies in the hybrid-electric space, in addition to supporting other active programs, like the Panthera and the Nuuva. And continue to invest in the eVTOL space, but doing it in a way that we think will leverage a multi-mission-capable platform is where the priority sits right now.
“The Textron perspective was never simply focused on the urban air mobility market, but more so, we look at it like we would look at a Textron Aviation product or a Bell product, which would have to have a range and payload that is going to meet the mission of your customer. We want to make sure that we continue to stay true to our mission of advancing technologies, but doing so in a way that’s going to demonstrate [return on investment] on those technological advances and R&D investments.”
Although the Velis Electro has somewhat limited endurance, as a Textron eAviation product, it is subject to continual improvement. “I would lean into my nearly 30 years with Textron,” Shortt said, “which is that you’re being backed by a company that has demonstrated through multiple product lines that it invests in its product portfolio and that its customers are going to be well taken care of.”
Meanwhile, since its first flight in January, the Nuuva V300 has begun flying maneuvers, including heading shifts and returning to a point. “[The team] has been working diligently to expand the hover envelope,” Shortt said. “We’re building the second air vehicle, which will have our own fly-by-wire system, and it’ll have the internal combustion engine, which will allow us to transition to on-wing flight.”
Nuuva missions will include three primary use cases: commercial logistics such as last-mile delivery, special missions, and disaster relief. The internal combustion engine enables the hybrid-electric propulsion system, which has eight electric motors. “We’ll continue to mature the needs of the vehicle to do an even more capable motor and battery setup,” she said.