Demonstrator flight tests continue as production aircraft design gets underway
I’ve followed many twists and turns in the nascent advanced air mobility industry over my three years covering these aircraft designed to ferry passengers and a variety of cargo. One of the latest trends is the growing interest in hybrid propulsion, in addition to the purely electric designs that dominated the early years of development.
As I’ve previously reported, this shift is in large part due to the U.S. Air Force’s AFWERX Agility Prime program. Executives in recent months have spoken more frequently about the benefits of hybrid-electric propulsion, which generally entails having a fossil fuel generator to charge the batteries in flight or send current directly to motors when needed.
Perhaps no company is more pleased about this than Electra, the 70-person company founded in 2020 by John Langford of Aurora Flight Sciences fame. From the start, plans called for a hybrid-electric aircraft that would look markedly different than the electric-only designs other companies were working on.
“The bulk of the industry have spent their time over the last decade trying to use electric to displace fuel entirely, but that was never our intent,” says CEO Marc Allen during a March 3 interview. I spoke to him about the roots of Electra’s aircraft development and design choices by video from his office at Electra’s headquarters, adjacent to Manassas Regional Airport in Virginia.
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Instead, he says, the strategy was to design the aircraft to take advantage of “what electric can do that aviation fuel cannot do. More specifically, what capabilities can you generate through distributed electric propulsion?”
The answer they arrived at was blown lift, the aerodynamic effect created by propellers blowing air at a wing. Since late 2023, Electra has been flying its two-seat EL-2 demonstrator to refine this technique for its planned production aircraft, the nine-seat EL9 that executives unveiled in a video presentation late last year.
“We’re heavy in the design phase. We will start now moving to the development of the production system,” Allen says. “That’ll be a fair bit of work to put us in position to be flying a pre-production EL9 in 2027.”
Flight plans and conditions vary from test to test, but here’s the general concept for blown lift: As the EL-2’s eight propellers accelerate air at the wing, lift is increased so the aircraft can take off and land in as little as 45 meters (150 feet) and fly as slow as 40 kph (22 knots) without buffet.
While NASA and several companies have researched or built fossil-fueled, blown-lift aircraft — mostly using the term “blown flap” — Allen says the difference is the number of propellers possible with distributed electric propulsion. “You just can’t hang eight propellers on a wing with a traditional propulsion system.”
With distributed propulsion, Allen says each EL9 will be able to carry roughly as much cargo as a delivery van up to 1,600 kilometers, “and land it on an unimproved surface in only 150 feet, which is crazy. You couldn’t do this 15 years ago.”
With less cargo, Electra estimates that the EL9’s range can be extended up to 2,000 kilometers.
That’s the kind of range and capacity that has U.S. military services intrigued by hybrid propulsion, he says. Electra last year flew the EL-2 at Marine Corps Air Facility Quantico, Langley Air Force Base and Felker Army Airfield, all in Virginia. Allen says that large “delegations” of military commanders and decision makers observed the flights, though he wouldn’t provide more detail. He cited these demonstrations as evidence of military interest but declined to elaborate on any feedback Electra received.
He did describe how such military interest is influencing EL9’s design, noting that Electra is “spending a lot of time with the defense customer, understanding how this product meets their needs and requirements.” One particular feature of interest is whether an EL9 could function as a power generator in the field after landing in tight spots.
“We’ve all seen pictures of a Chinook flying in, hanging generators down in big chains trying to land,” he says, an apparent reference to multiple operations and conflicts. “That gets to be a thing of the past. EL9 is 600 kilowatts of power to charge your communications gear, your mobile command post, your drones, even charge your directed energy systems. You can get up to a megawatt burst, so it completely changes the game for power generation on the ground.”
In parallel, Electra also is “making a lot of choices about the suppliers that we’re integrating into the EL9, and it’s the learnings from the EL-2 that are very much feeding that process.” Three components being addressed are the design of the propellers, motors and coolant delivery and storage, but Allen declined to elaborate about any changes that are planned or already underway. The EL-2 is air-cooled, with ambient air circulating past motors to keep them at the ideal temperature. Allen wouldn’t say if that will be the case with the EL9, saying he doesn’t want to give away information to potential competitors.
Along with the military interest, Allen anticipates heavy commercial demand for the EL9. Electra has some 2,000 provisional orders from various operators, and Allen says “we are anticipating additional customers who are making deposits in 2025 to begin to lock down individual delivery slots for aircraft.”
