Certification of Eviation’s all-electric Alice commuter appears more distant than the company had previously hoped.
Andre Stein, chief executive of the US electric aircraft developer, told FlightGlobal at Farnborough air show in July that he anticipates certification of Alice “this decade, around 2028”.
Previously, the start-up had said it would fly a production-conforming prototype of the battery-electric aircraft in 2025, with the aim of securing certification about two years later.
“Eviation remains committed to moving forward with Alice’s entry into service as soon as feasible, working with the FAA toward certification,” Eviation said on 28 August. “As such, we are currently making progress on our supplier selection and aircraft development process.”
Stein insists Alice remains on a “well-ridden track” to certification. He adds that the company plans to build five or six production-conforming prototypes, and to use those aircraft to complete a planned 12-18-month flight-test campaign. Stein does not specify when the campaign is likely to launch.
Arlington, Washington-based Eviation reshaped the design of its proposed nine-passenger aircraft following an 8min maiden flight in September 2022. After the lone sortie, Alice remained grounded for months as the company maintained it was reviewing flight data, seeing no advantage in further flight testing.
But Eviation then acknowledged, one year after the first flight, that Alice was undergoing a ”subtle” redesign. At the time, Eviation said its timeline for certification and service-entry was unchanged.
In April, Eviation revealed a new-look Alice featuring a more-traditional tube-and-wing design with a “constant cross section”. The company said it had completed a conceptual design review alongside TLG Aerospace.
The original concept’s signature elliptical fuselage was deemed too difficult to manufacture and less than ideal from a space-efficiency perspective, Stein says. “There is a big focus on manufacturing the aircraft and how we’re going to minimise manufacturing costs.”
Stein, a former Embraer and Eve Air Mobility executive who was named CEO of Eviation in January, calls the latest iteration of Alice an “evolution” rather than a redesign. He says further visual changes are unlikely moving forward.
“As with any aircraft development, it becomes more and more mature, with less and less visual changes,” he says. ”You’re going to refine. You’re going to move from the volume and weight of a certain system to the actual system and the actual interfaces.”
“At this point, we are defining the system architecture, detailing the design of the aircraft and selecting main suppliers,” he says.
During consultancy firm McKinsey & Company’s late-April Regional Air Mobility summit in San Francisco, Stein said Alice’s new constant cross-section enables the company to use the same part numbers for windows and side panels.
”It allows for future growth, as well, if the batteries get to that point,” Stein says. “You can stretch it a bit further and do a family of larger aircraft.”
The traditional-looking fuselage also creates a “more-consistent” passenger experience throughout the cabin and more room for cargo.
”With the elliptical shape, the [people] in the middle have the biggest cross-section,” Stein says.
Another notable change is a larger, centralised compartment for the energy storage system, located above the wing.
Consistent with the aircraft’s previous design, Alice’s airframe is to be made from carbon composite material.
Alice’s evolution has become something of a cautionary tale for other electric aircraft developers. Eric Lithun, CEO of Norwegian electric-seaplane start-up Elfly, told FlightGlobal at Farnborough that he would prefer not to make major design changes in later development stages.
“Building a complete plane, flying it for 8min and then saying ‘I would probably never fly it again’ – that’s a lot of wasted money, and that’s what I’m trying to avoid,” he says.
Stein insists customer interest in Alice remains robust. The company says it has secured more than 600 letters of intent (LOIs) for aircraft worth an estimated $5 billion. Some of those deals have included deposits.
The start-up hopes to begin converting LOIs into firm orders once it has finalised suppliers for Alice, “because then you can commit to a certain bill of materials”, Stein says, adding that Eviation has “identified but not selected” more than 80% of Alice suppliers.
“If anything, we are growing the confidence that we have something that is certifiable,” he says.
