Hydrogen-Run eVTOL Demonstrator Flies 5 Times As Far Joby Aviation successfully flew a Hydrogen-powered eVTOL demonstrator over 500 miles in June 2024. All the news relating to eVTOL have been performance derived from an electric drive-train. H2Fly is Joby's German subsidiary and was instrumental in producing the hydrogen-electric propulsion architecture. The distance was 523 miles with the aircraft landing with approximately 10% of its hydrogen fuel remaining.
This is quite a feat as battery technology is not efficient enough to produce this kind of range in the same aircraft. In fact, the air-taxi market only expects to conduct flight runs that are in the region of 100 miles or less. Essentially this flew 5 times the distance with hydrogen. Of course it wasn't a real world with passengers and cargo onboard type flight but it demonstrates the potential for much longer flights that could connect just more than small points within a metropolitan area.
As for the architecture and process involved with the hydrogen-electric outfit, the following describes how it works. The demonstrator aircraft employs a fuel tank designed and built custom by Joby. That tank can store as much as 40 kilograms of liquid hydrogen. The craft carries less batteries than the regular model. Onboard there is a fuel cell system developed by H2Fly that is fed by the hydrogen. That in turn makes electricity, water, and heat. The electricity component runs the six motors aboard responsible for flight. The batteries contribute additional power during takeoff and landing phases. Joby’s H2FLY team used similar technology to complete another record-breaking flight in September 2023, when they flew the world’s first piloted flight of a conventional liquid hydrogen-electric aircraft using their fuel cell technology. For more information: Joby Aviation 333 Echinal Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95060, U.S.A. www.jobyaviation.com ***
