Lilium and Eviation troubles & more (The Allplane Newsletter #180)
Electric aviation
Eviation has laid off most of its staff, reports The Air Current. When this happens it is usually a really bad sign, but the fact is that there not much has been heard about it since its Alice prototype completed its maiden flight more than 2 years ago. It would be sad to see this interesting 9-seater electric aircraft project go.
It was actually a real pioneer, which I had the chance to include in the list of promising electric startups that I wrote for CNN back in 2017! Its former CEO was also on the podcast, btw.
Tidal Flight got a 20 aircraft order from Florida-based Tropic Ocean Airways. Tidal is working on a clean-sheet electric amphibious aircraft, while Tropic Ocean Airways operates seaplane services linking the US to the Bahamas. Its founder and CEO, former US Navy “Top Gun” pilot Rob Ceravolo was on the podcast some time ago talking about the seaplane business.
FREYR Battery is cancelling a massive (€2.57B) new plant project in Georgia (h/t Paul Perera). Aviation is one of the markets that FREYR is eyeing.
Anders Forslund, founder and CEO of Heart Aerospace, was on the great Cleaning Up podcast!
Advanced Air Mobility
Lilium seems to be in trouble again. It looks like the new investors have not put the money in yet and salaries can’t be paid until they do.
Archer has secured another $300M in funding, from BlackRock among others.
Quantum Systems has acquired a majority stake in EFT Mobility, a developer of electrically-powered unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and alumni of the Sustainable Aero Lab.
Hydrogen Aviation
Looks like the link I included in the last newsletter with the story about Airbus revising its ambitions for the ZEROe hydrogen aircraft programme was broken - ooops! - so here it is. The story is still current, in my opinion!
Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)
Spark e-Fuels, a German startup working on a novel technology to scale up efficiently the production of SAF, has raised a €2.3M round from Nucleus Capital and other investors.
Norsk e-Fuel will build a Power-to-liquids (PtL) plant in northern Sweden with the capacity to produce 80,000 tons of SAF per year.
Other sustainable aviation stories
Dr. Klaus Radermacher, engineer, consultant and author of the “Think. Mobility. Differently” newsletter and expert reflects on which could be the alternative sources of propulsion for aviation. Btw, Dr. Radermacher was also on the podcast!
What else in aviation?
Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 went supersonic again, this time boom-less.
Interesting video by Y Combinator partner Jared Friedman interviewing Blake Scholl.
Scholl was also the main topic of a recent episode of My First Million podcast, which I can recommend.
Is ITA Airways (now part of the Lufthansa family) resurrecting the historical Alitalia brand? Kind of…
Americans are coming to Greenland! and, no, I am not referring to President Trump’s interest in acquiring the island, but of the new flight to Greenland being launched by United Airlines. Will there be enough accommodation for everyone? Remember the place has a really small population!
Brussels Airlines has marked 100 years of its services to Africa, its core long-haul market. The Belgian post even released a beautiful stamp celebrating this milestone.
(maybe it’s time to update my post about aviation-themed stamps soon)
