Joby Aviation’s Hydrogen-Electrical Air Taxi Completes 523-Mile Check Flight

Joby Aviation has achieved a big milestone by efficiently finishing a 523-mile check flight of its hydrogen-electric air taxi at its Marina, California facility. The flight, powered by liquid hydrogen, was carried out on June twenty fourth, 2024, and resulted in water as the one emission. The plane landed with over ten % of its hydrogen gasoline remaining, marking an important step in the direction of regional flights within the US with zero emissions aside from water.

Joby Aviation’s founder and CEO, JoeBen Bevirt, envisions a future the place People can journey between cities like San Francisco to San Diego, Boston to Baltimore, or Nashville to New Orleans with no need conventional airports. The hydrogen-electric eVTOL (electrical Vertical Takeoff and Touchdown) plane produces minimal noise and no emissions other than water.

For the check, Joby transformed a pre-production prototype battery-electric plane, equipping it with a liquid hydrogen gasoline tank and gasoline cell system. The corporate goals to start industrial operations by 2025, initially with its battery-electric air taxi, adopted by the hydrogen-powered model.

The hydrogen-electric air taxi is supplied with six electrical propulsion items that energy its tilting propellers and cost the flight management system. Whereas the batteries present extra energy for takeoff and touchdown, the liquid hydrogen was the first vitality supply for almost all of the flight.

As we’ve got defined earlier than within the MACA Carcopter article, liquid hydrogen, which has over 3 times the vitality density of gasoline, is good for weight-sensitive purposes like aviation (bear in mind we’ve additionally seen different very attention-grabbing tasks exploring comparable tech, like Hyundai’s Supernal-SA2,V-House’s V Speeder-X and even ASKA’s ASKA A5).

The Joby Aviation plane featured a vacuum-jacketed tank able to storing as much as 40 kilos of hydrogen, designed to preserve the hydrogen at roughly -423 levels Fahrenheit (-252.78 °C).

In the course of the flight, the H2F-175 gasoline cell system, developed by H2FLY (a subsidiary of Joby Aviation), transformed hydrogen into electrical energy by combining it with oxygen from the air, producing water and warmth within the course of. This electrical energy powered the plane’s motors and recharged its batteries.

Joby Aviation plans to leverage the design, testing, and certification work from its battery-electric plane for the hydrogen-electric variant. The corporate additionally expects to make use of the identical touchdown pads, operations group, and ElevateOS software for each sorts of plane, aiming to launch industrial flights in 2025.

Filed in Transportation. Learn extra about Eco (environment), Editorpick, Electric Aircraft, Electric Vehicle, Flight, Fuel Cell, Hydrogen and Innovation.