Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
As the year draws to a close, we’re looking back at an action-packed year for hydrogen in aviation, and for ZeroAvia in particular. This will be a little bit like the holiday card circular – “the kids are doing great, Brad’s in college now and Sarah made varsity swimming,” just applied to zero-emission aviation developments! So here we go…
The first flight of the Dornier 228 testbed aircraft at Kemble now feels like an age ago, which is a minor miracle given we felt like we had been waiting for the right weather window for an eternity. That first Dornier 228 turned out to be the first of many great flight tests of fuel cell powered aircraft in 2023, truly making this year one where any doubts over the viability of hydrogen-electric propulsion systems were answered vigorously.
With ten test flights across the year, at ZeroAvia we are on track to move rapidly into certification for our 600kW system for up to 20 seat aircraft. But the imperative is there to go into larger aircraft segments, so the HTPEM fuel cell breakthroughs we unveiled in March and the unveiling of the Dash 8 400 testbed in Seattle are hugely significant. At the same time, the ground test of our 900kW modular HyperCore electric motor 1.8 MW configuration aboard the HyperTruck was another major validating ground test to developing our ZA2000 engine for 40-80 seat aircraft.
In June, many of our team decamped to Paris Airshow for the very first time, announcing our first Definitive Purchase Agreement with MONTE, a new deal with Green Aeroleasing, publishing details of our study with MHIRJ on the potential for a hydrogen-electric CRJ 700 and a 250 engine pre-order from California HQ’d Air Cahana.
August brought the unveiling of ZeroAvia’s own aviation fuel cell compressor, a world-first innovation to be celebrated in its own right, but also another crucial enabler to delivering the certifiable ZA600.
In September, we announced the first close of our Series C funding round co-led by Airbus, Barclays and NEOM Investment Fund. In November, we completed the financing including a cornerstone-level investment from the UK Infrastructure Bank.
Further powertrain deals and partnerships with airline operators and lessors took us north of 2,000 engine pre-orders, most recently when we announced a deal with UK new entrant airline Ecojet for 70 powertrains.
Fuel supply is key and we are not sitting around waiting for it to be built. We have expanded our demonstration Hydrogen Airport Refuelling Ecosystems (HARE) in the UK and US, and we are bringing more energy majors to the table. Masdar and Fortum both signed partnership agreements with ZeroAvia.
There was more! TIME recognized ZeroAvia twice – first as one of the 100 most influential companies and second by recognizing Val as one of the world’s most influential leaders on climate change. We won great plaudits at both Davos and COP28, and our Hydrogen Aviation Summit was the most successful event to date.
We’re not quite done yet with 2023, but we’re also ready to bring truly clean flight one step closer in 2024!
