Eviation on hold for electric flight- PULL THE PLUG?
Arlington, WA based Eviation has laid off its technical staff. The company’s ALICE had completed a maiden flight. Technology looked good, but why now halting its efforts? Dominic Gates, a highly respected aerospace reporter at the Seattle Times, tells what he has found out in the article below.
Does this signal that a potential green solution for short range flights has failed? Is THE PLUG BEING PULLED ON THIS PROMISING SOLUTION FOR THIS SEGMENT?
The recent track of aviation news reports has not been all that encouraging. It was thought that long distance flights, because of the weight of alternative energy sources, would be powered by batteries. That technology has a relatively long and/or uncertain development horizon:
- 1/30/2024 PRC’s nuclear battery shows the Red Dragon tech Threat. – JDA Journal
- 4/1/2024 #AVIATION‘s #INNOVATION has #technical and #financial challenges. Does #GREEN attract #CAPITAL ?
- 5/8/2024 Battery Technological Explosion coming, path to FAA approval – JDA Journal
- 8/13/2024 MagniX’ s “breakthrough” to a viable, certificatable battery – JDA Journal
As early as 2019, the use of electrical power for shorter range flights appeared to be useful-
- Quieter, no CO2 emissions, lower operating costs– #Alice comes to #CapeAir for regional flights to be adored by the neighbors and passengers
The very effective trade association which represents these very aircraft made a specific recommendation on the utility of batteries for this mission-
There are a lot of promising technologies with impressive specs and projected operating costs that airlines crave. A more telling test appeared to have been “WHAT HAVE YOU SOLD TO CUSTOMERS.” That indicator was met:
- A sound regional airline, CAPE AIR was first in line:
- Eviation In April of 2022, Cape Air signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) for 75 all-electric 9-seater Eviation Alice aircraft. Cape Air is uniquely positioned to work with and provide technical support to Eviation as a launch partner. .
- Industry and Government Partnerships
- Participation with government and industry partners in the development of a commuter electric fixed-wing aircraft
Eventually Eviation published this substantial Order Book on its website (there today); this says that knowledgeable operators were likely serious buyers!!!
WHAT HAPPENED? Mr. Gates gathered all of the available information using his local sources. Serious questions remain for an investigative reporters and information needs to be shared with the industry to assess the potential for this heretofore promising Green Solution. Questions like:
- Were there real $$$ deposits associated with these “orders” and are they refundable?
- Did the further technological development encounter problems?
- Reliability of the batteries?
- Could this power source sustain the flight range promised?
- Dependability of the electric motors?
- Unexpected costs of operating the Alice?
- Availability of “plugs” to recharge these airplanes? All associated infrastructure needs?
- Total environmental costs– not just flight but did generation of adequate electricity have impact?
- Was weight of airframe, needed to reduce total thrust, also able to meet the FAA strength of structure tests?
- Certainly, there are other possibilities.
Eviation’s answers to these questions have some major PROPRIETARY VALUE; there may be some way to LICENSE THE LESSONS and sell them to another potential enterprise?
WA electric plane startup halts operations in blow to green aviation
Arlington-based startup Eviation, which flew the first flight of its sleek all-electric airplane at Moses Lake in fall 2022, laid off most of its staff last week after failing to attract new funding, according to two employees who were among those cut.
“The company is pausing operations indefinitely,” said an engineer. “Most of the engineering team is gone.”
“We were all invested in the program. We hoped until the last moment that it would succeed,” said the other employee. “Very few folks are left.”
Both asked not to be named to protect future job prospects.
The Eviation workforce was mostly in Arlington but with a small team in Israel, where the company was founded in 2015 before the move to Washington state.
The company shrank gradually through attrition from about 120 employees at first flight in 2022, down to about 70 people a year ago and then to about 30 before the layoffs.
The main shareholder of Eviation is CLERMONT GROUP, a collection of investment companies funded by New Zealand-born, Singapore-based billionaire Richard Chandler.
Clermont also owns EVERETT-BASED ELECTRIC MOTOR AND BATTERY-MAKER MAGNIX, which provided the motors that powered that battery-powered first flight in 2022.
After that achievement, Eviation decided to redesign the nine-passenger, two-crew commuter airplane — named Alice, after Alice in Wonderland — and pushed out entry into service until no earlier than 2027.
Since then, it has worked on updating the technology, including selecting new electric motors and bringing in suppliers ready to invest.
But one employee said the ownership structure, which includes ties to an Israeli company, made it difficult to attract electric aviation systems suppliers outside the Clermont Group.
An article in Hebrew in an Israeli tech journal this week quoted Aviv Tsidon, one of Eviation’s co-founders, criticizing the decision to wind down operations without prior notice. The Feb. 10 article goes on to state that some of the Israeli shareholders holding special minority rights may try to block the move.
The journal, citing unnamed sources, said the Clermont Group had been in talks with investors in the United Arab Emirates and speculated that the goal may be to shutter the U.S. operation and move the company there.
Eviation has made no public announcement about its halt to operations and CEO ANDRE STEIN did not return messages. The news of the layoffs was first reported in the U.S. Friday by specialist aviation news site The Air Current and confirmed independently by The Seattle Times.
Eviation first showed off a nonflying prototype of what became Alice at the 2019 Paris Air Show.Top of FormBottom of Form
By 2022, the first CEO of Eviation, Omer Bar-Yohay, predicted at a conference in Lynnwood that the company would be building “many hundreds, if not a thousand airplanes per year in a reasonable time.”
What looks now like the end of this innovative airplane concept follows the failure of a series of zero-emissions aviation technology projects to reach fruition.
UNIVERSAL HYDROGEN, the pioneering startup that in 2023 flew a partially hydrogen-powered flight, also out of Moses Lake, went bust last June.
In Europe, short-range air taxi startups LILIUM AND VOLOCOPTER have failed, and TECNAM of Italy postponed its P-Volt electric commuter plane.
And AIRBUS, prioritizing the production ramp-up of its conventional jets, has abruptly halted its electric and hydrogen aviation projects.
Last month, it halted its CityAirbus electric air taxi project and then this week scrapped its much-hyped plan to develop a hydrogen-powered plane by 2035.
