FutureFlight

Eve Air Mobility will locate its first eVTOL aircraft production facility in the city of Taubaté, in the state of São Paulo, Brazil.

Ampaire, a California-based tech start-up working to retrofit airplanes with hybrid-electric powertrains, is expanding into eVTOL aircraft manufacturing with the acquisition of drone developer Talyn Air. Announcing the acquisition on July 20, Ampaire said the move will boost revenues and accelerate growth as it ventures beyond hybrid-electric propulsion systems to explore drone and eVTOL applications for both the commercial and defense sectors. 

Reliable Robotics says the FAA has accepted its certification plans for a fully autonomous flight control system, which the company plans to install on aircraft to enable remotely piloted operations under a supplemental type certificate (STC). The technology is intended to support fully autonomous gate-to-gate trips, including taxi, takeoff, and landing.

Textron Starts Wind Tunnel Tests for Nexus eVTOL Aircraft

Textron eAviation this week confirmed that it has started wind tunnel testing with a 23 percent scale model of its planned Nexus eVTOL aircraft. The company's engineers are looking to validate the vehicle's performance, stability, and control to ensure the accuracy of their preliminary configuration, range, and speed estimates. 

Vertical Aerospace has started untethered flight testing with the first full-scale prototype of its VX4 eVTOL aircraft. On July 19, the UK company released images and video showing the aircraft in flight at Cotswold Airport and confirmed that flight testing has been progressing for several weeks.

South Korean regional airline Hi-Air is the latest prospective operator for Plana's CP-01 hybrid-electric aircraft. The manufacturer is also joining forces with Gloria Aviation, a Seoul-based company that trains aviation professionals, to cultivate the workforce for the rapidly growing advanced air mobility (AAM) industry. Via a memorandum of understanding signed on July 11, Plana and Gloria Aviation committed to forming a joint business dedicated to training the maintenance technicians and pilots that will fly new aircraft such as eVTOL air taxis.

Through a mix of public and private placement of stock, Nasdaq-listed Lilium has raised $292 million in new funding, including a just-concluded $192 million capital raise and an earlier $100 million commitment in May. Its backers include existing shareholder Tencent (through its Aceville affiliate), plus other venture capital groups and Lilium board members and senior executives.

Austrian aircraft maintenance firm Primus Aero has decided to purchase a fleet of PAL-V’s Liberty “flying cars,” the companies announced on Thursday. A PAL-V spokesperson told FutureFlight that Primus has initially reserved five Liberty vehicles, and the company has already placed down payments for those deliveries. Primus will primarily use the two-seat, drive-and-fly vehicles to quickly transport maintenance technicians and spare parts to clients at various airports, thereby reducing aircraft downtime. 

EHang has raised an additional $23 million in working capital with a private share subscription by South Korean music producer and entertainment entrepreneur Lee Soo Man. The Chinese company says it is getting closer to completing domestic type certification for its EH216 two-seat autonomous eVTOL aircraft.

Artificial intelligence isn’t only changing the way airplanes fly. It’s transforming nearly every aspect of aviation on the ground, too. As AI and machine-learning technology have matured in recent years, the aviation industry has explored ways to capitalize on it by making ground operations more efficient and often safer. Aircraft developers can also leverage generative AI—models like ChatGPT that use machine learning and deep neural networks—to drastically speed up design and testing processes for new aircraft.