A hybrid electric aircraft capable of carrying 10 passengers: the company Voltaéro launched on Wednesday the inaugural flight of this aircraft of the future, a “world first”, which took off from Royan, before embarking on a tour of France, noted the AFP.
“To my knowledge, this is a world first,” confides Didier Esteyne, test pilot and co-founder of the Voltaéro company, at the origin of this inaugural flight from Charente-Maritime, to AFP.
“Many people around the world have embarked on 100% electric engines but not in the hybridization of heat engines and electric motors,” he explains.
The pilot and his co-founder partner of Voltaéro, Jean Botti, both former Airbus executives, want to launch in 2022 a range of three models of four, six and ten seater planes powered by this new generation engine.
A fleet capable of “relaunching French general aviation for everyone, business, leisure or commercial trips”, hopes Jean Botti.
This Wednesday, the “Cassio 1”, a six-seater Cessna 337 transformed “into a flying test bench”, according to Didier Esteyne, provided this first flight but it will be its successor, the “Cassio 2”, with lines and Modern propellers designed by Voltaéro, which will be marketed in a price range of 700,000 euros to 2.3 million euros depending on the model, “announces Jean Botti.
While for the four and six seater models a conventional private pilot license will suffice, the commercial license will be required for the ten seater version.
With a heat engine coupled to five electric motors, three of which can also generate electricity to supply the whole with energy, the Cassio 1 “has the power to carry ten people and the range to fly 1,200 kilometers or for three hours and a half “, assures Jean Botti. “It will be very competitive for connections between Bordeaux and Lyon for example,” he argues.
Voltaéro also plans to set up a school to train pilots and mechanics. “It will be imperative to know how to use high voltage batteries – I’m talking about 500 volts per battery and one battery per engine – and master a power of 800 horsepower in total. We will sell the training with the aircraft”, explains Jean Botti.
To further demonstrate that the Cassio 2 will be the clean plane and much less noisy than all aviation expects, the duo will embark in a fortnight in a Tour de France which will start in Vannes (Morbihan) and will mark eleven stages in Tours (Indre et Loire), Le Havre (Seine-Maritime), Toussus-le-Noble (Yvelines), near Paris, then Troyes (Aube), Dijon (Côte-d’Or), Annecy (Haute-Savoie) ), Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône), Nîmes (Gard), Toulouse (Haute-Garonne) and finally Angoulême (Charente).
olg-nal / in
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