Hybrid-electric aircraft developer Ampaire has received $150,000 in funding from NASA for its High Efficiency Powertrain for Hybrid Aircraft (HEPHA) project, the company announced on December 9. The Phase 1 award from NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program will help to fund the “sizing, architecture and other analytical studies” for Ampaire’s hybrid-electric powertrain over the next six months, the company said in a statement.
The California-based company hopes the Phase 1 award will be a prelude to a possible Phase 2 award, which would fund the installation and testing of Ampaire’s powertrain on a Cessna Skymaster testbed aircraft known as the ARPA-E Bird. The U.S. Department of Energy’s advanced research unit, ARPA-E (short for Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy), has previously used the Cessna Skymaster for research purposes.
Ampaire's business model is to develop hybrid-electric powertrains that can be used to convert existing aircraft, starting with the Cessna Grand Caravan utility aircraft under the produce name Eco Caravan. It also has plans to convert the larger DHC-6 Twin Otter and, by the 2030s, regional airliners carrying 30 or 40 passengers. The company has backing from partners including the maintenance, repair and overhaul division of Air France KLM.
As part of the SBIR program, Ampaire will equip the ARPA-E Bird “with a hybrid propulsion drivetrain in the nose and an electric drive system in the rear for a multi-mode hybrid system,” company officials said in a statement, adding that the system “could be certified for light aircraft or used as part of larger power systems on regional aircraft and even transport category single-aisle jets.”
This testbed ARPA-E Bird aircraft will also play a role in a $9 million award Ampaire received last month from ARPA-E’s SCALEUP (Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential) program. SCALEUP aims to accelerate the development of hybrid-electric aircraft subsystems that can be certified for a range of commercial aircraft and produced in large volumes.
On November 22, the ARPA-E advanced programs unit announced that it had granted Ampaire $9 million in funding to continue the development of the company’s nine-passenger, hybrid-electric Eco Caravan. The Eco Caravan, which made its debut flight on November 18, is a converted, hybrid-electric version of the popular Cessna Grand Caravan utility aircraft and the world’s largest hybrid-electric airplane to conduct a flight test to date.
“Ampaire has been flying and refining hybrid-electric prototype aircraft since 2019 and the next step is to develop a fully-integrated propulsion system, the AMP-H570, that meets strict certification requirements,” said Ampaire CEO Kevin Noertker. “SCALEUP will be central to supporting this process at Ampaire and contribute to the certification of the nine-passenger Eco Caravan.”
A company spokesman told FutureFlight that Ampaire “is still sorting through considerable flight test data,” and that the aircraft has already made a subsequent flight since its debut. The test flight program will continue into 2023, the spokesman said.
“These wins from NASA and the DOE recognize Ampaire’s leadership in electrified aviation. They also recognize the near-term potential to field hybrid-electric aircraft that will revolutionize aviation by lowering emissions and the cost of travel,” Noertker added.
