Overair garners $145M in investment to fly its eVTOL prototype in 2023.

17/06/2022 Drive Pilots

Overair eVTOL

Electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) developer Overair has introduced the purchase of an additional $a hundred forty five million in investment from plane era experts Hanwha Systems and Hanwha Aerospace. In addition to its enduring funding, Hanwha will offer electric powered cars and battery packs for Overair’s Butterfly eVTOL prototypes, which stay heading in the right direction to take to the sky in the following year.

Overair is a complicated air mobility expert primarily based totally in Santa Ana, California, that spun out of Karem Aircraft in 2020. Its group has used a long time of blended aerospace revel in to broaden Overseas flagship eVTOL, Butterfly, which initially debuted in 2021.

The Butterfly’s modern-day layout can convey 5 passengers plus a pilot, or 1,one hundred kilos of cargo, and it will likely be capable of attain a pinnacle pace of 2 hundred mph – all even as journeying approximately one hundred miles on an unmarried charge. Overair hopes to carry this eVTOL to production, wherein it could function as an opportunity for transportation to congested metropolitan regions like Los Angeles.

Like different eVTOL businesses we’ve got covered, Overair is operating with Urban Movement Labs (UML) to create a safe, equitable, and sustainable direction to eVTOL transportation at the West Coast.

Up till this point, the Overair group has handiest finished full-scale propulsion testing. Progress, yes, however the Butterfly has but to be constructed. Following its trendy announcement, Overair has shown a brand new inflow of investment to get its eVTOL prototype into the air.

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With new investment, Overair is heading in the right direction for eVTOL flights in 2023

Overair shared information of its trendy funding price range in a press launch today, which incorporates R&D cooperation with its investors – Hanwha Systems and Hanwha Aerospace. Sungchul Eoh, CEO of Hanwha Systems, spoke approximately the choice to spend money on Overair and its eVTOL era:

Hanwha’s primary standards for brand spanking new enterprise improvement is consciousness on ‘Disruptive Innovation’ which can uproot and shift the marketplace and era tendencies primarily based totally on its centre abilities. In alignment with its centre abilities in addition to its primary groups, Hanwha is selecting ‘Game Changer’ groups that it could sincerely excel withinside the future, and [the] eVTOL automobile is one in all the ‘Game changers. With regard to our funding choice in Overair, we assessed that the organisation had the severa sufferers and centre technology required to broaden surprisingly efficient, low noise automobiles. Therefore, we anticipated that Overair might be able to grow first-rate automobiles which can fulfil the necessities for safety, efficiency, pace, low noise, and environment-pleasant features. We see the capacity of Overair’s Optimum Speed Propulsion gadget and we are able to hold paintings collectively to locate synergies and produce this step forward era to the sector.

Butterfly’s Optimum Speed Propulsion (OSP) makes use of 4 big propellers that spin slowly whilst soaring or even slower whilst cruising, drawing handiest a fragment of the to be had motor strength even as permitting for additional payload capability and strength margins. The slow-turning props additionally produce appreciably much less noise.

In addition to its funding, Hanwha plans to offer the electrical cars and battery packs to the Overair eVTOL prototypes, which stay heading in the right direction to start check flights withinside the 2nd 1/2 of 2023. Overair Cofounder and CEO Ben Tigner spoke approximately the funding and subsequent steps:

This is a super milestone for our developing group, and we’re extraordinarily properly located to supply sustainable aerial ridesharing to the sector via the improvement of Butterfly. We’re precisely where we need to be, constructing an advanced plane organisation with elegant main mobility era round an unmatched plane even as swiftly coming near the primary flight of a purpose-constructed prototype subsequent year. We’ve demonstrated Butterfly’s propulsion gadget, so we’ll now start validating Butterfly’s potential to perform competently in real-global climate conditions, convey vast payloads, and fly fairly quietly.