Connecticut Based Aircraft Manufacturer - Powered by six sets of blades, the Joby Aviation S4 can lift a helicopter then tilt its rotors forward to fly like an airplane. In a flight test last year, a pilot flew the aircraft 150 miles in just over an hour and a quarter.
Plenty of others are working towards the same goal. Heading into last year, the Vertical Flight Society tracked nearly 200 companies or designers working on electric aircraft that can take off and land like a helicopter.
Connecticut Based Aircraft Manufacturer
But Sikorsky is now in catch-up mode. In California, Joby Aviation has already completed more than 1,000 test flights of a tilt-rotor electric aircraft, having received an "airworthiness" certificate from the U.S. Air Force and seeking one from the Federal Aviation Administration.
In November, Sikorsky and parent Lockheed Martin won their latest U.S. patent for an electric drive capable of delivering the power needed to lift a medium-sized helicopter like a Sikorsky Black Hawk or S-76, and maintain flight for an extended stretch.
Sikorsky has received a number of patents since 2008 on varying iterations of the technology. A Sikorsky S-76 over New Haven in February 2013. The Stratford-based manufacturer patented a design in November 2021 for a helicopter powered by an electric motor rather than an internal combustion engine, which could enable quiet flight with improved safety and cost characteristics.
A dozen years ago, Sikorsky brought a working, all-electric helicopter to an Experimental Aircraft Association show in Wisconsin. The Sikorsky Firefly could stay aloft for only 15 minutes, and with room for just the pilot to allow for the big lithium-ion batteries from which it drew electricity.
Couple electric power with the autonomous flight capabilities Sikorsky demonstrated this month, and Cherepinsky says a new generation of helicopters is on the horizon that will be far safer to operate in city environments, far quieter and with other advantages as well.
"We believe in taking on challenges that others shy away from — we approach them without any preconceived ideas and we work hard and fast to solve them," Bevirt said in November. "Delivering an aircraft with a low noise footprint is fundamental to bringing our service closer to where customers want it."
One is Bell, a subsidiary of Rhode Island-based Textron, which pioneered tilt-rotor technology with the V-22 Osprey for the U.S. military. The past three years, Bell has been teasing a tilt-rotor aircraft helicopter that has six sets of blades, but configured like those in the fictional aircraft depicted in the movie "Avatar."
"Aircraft with electric propulsion are cheaper and they're greener, so it makes economic sense and it makes environmental sense," Cherepinsky said. "But the reason why we are doing all this is — first and foremost — safety.
We want to dramatically improve the safety of rotor craft.” A mock-up of Bell Textron's proposed Bell Nexus electric-powered aircraft on display at the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas in January 2019. The model is on display through July 2022 at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
(Press photo via Bell Textron). Cherepinsky offered no timeline for when Sikorsky might debut a "demonstrator" helicopter to test the capabilities of electric-powered flight, but said the manufacturer is actively developing the concept. The company is doing so even as a Department of Defense decision looms on an eventual replacement for the Black Hawk helicopter, which could set Sikorsky up for decades of Pentagon contracts.
In its demonstration this month of a helicopter with computers and sensors to execute pinpoint landings and complex flight routes with no pilot, Sikorsky gave only passing mention to another initiative gathering momentum at its Connecticut headquarters.
"Don't just think military — we are looking across all markets, military and civilian," Igor Cherepinsky, head of Sikorsky Innovations, said in an interview with Hearst Connecticut Media Group. "Being able to quietly land in Manhattan without the noise may mean acceptance of helicopters a lot more than now."
On Wednesday, one of Joby Aviation's two prototypes crashed during a flight test. The company has not released details on what went wrong, but the pilot was reported not to be injured. It remains unclear whether an investigation into the crash will cause a delay in the FAA certification process.
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