Project description
Electric turbines put VTOL aircraft on course
The sky’s the limit for the future of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft. There is incredible and remarkable progress being made beyond their decades-long use as special-purpose and military applications. In this context, the EU-funded Apollo project will help bring to market an electric turbine technology with static thrust for VTOL and dynamic thrust for linear flight. This is the first solution to support the industrialisation of VTOL technology. What is more, these electric turbines are up to four times more efficient than other electric ducted fans. This innovation enables the design of novel, much safer VTOL drones for operation in congested urban areas and over dangerous industrial sites.
Objective
For decades, vertical take-off and landing aircrafts (VTOL) have seen their use limited to special-purpose & military applications. By 2017, companies like Lilium Aviation and others started showcasing prototypes of electric “flying cars”. The key problem with these prototypes is that they require an efficient & reliable electric propulsion technology to be able to lift off their payload of 1-2 people. This propulsion technology must also support transition from VTOL to linear flight, otherwise its energy consumption will not allow any useful applications.
European Sustainable Propulsion brings to the market the first solution able to support the industrialization of VTOL development—an electric turbine technology with both static thrust for VTOL & dynamic thrust for linear flight.
Apollo electric turbines are 2-4x more efficient than other electric ducted fans, support tilt-free transition from VTOL to linear flight, are compact and are designed to enable scalable distributed electric propulsion. Our unique innovation enables design of novel, much safer VTOL drones for operation in congested urban areas & on dangerous industrial sites, allowing us to commercialize it to both to the current nascent market of passenger VTOL manufacturers, as well as to the upcoming heavy-duty VTOL market.
Our analysis shows the target markets for commercialization of Apollo of €13.75bn+ for passenger VTOLs and €690bn+ for heavy-duty drones in verticals such as oil & gas, construction, security & others.
In 2017 we were featured in Wired as a refreshingly realistic technology among other VTOL & drone-enabling technologies. Athena, the 1st generation of Apollo family turbines, are now under testing in FR, US & CA. Japanese Fire & Disaster Management Agency has just signed the purchase order for it.
By selling Apollo electric turbines to other VTOL drone manufacturers (short-term) & by building or own heavy-duty drones (long-term) we aim at €30m by 2022.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsliquid fuels
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringcontrol systems
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringroboticsautonomous robotsdrones
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringaircraftrotorcraft
- social sciencessocial geographytransporttransport planningair traffic management
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
60500 CHANTILLY
France
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.