For Kyle Clark, founder and CEO of Beta Technologies, his passion for engineering, aviation and sustainability is the catalyst behind Beta’s position as one of the frontrunners in the electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) revolution.
The company has designed and is well on its way to certifying and commercializing an eVTOL aircraft called the Alia-250, as well as an electric conventional takeoff and landing (eCTOL) version the company has named the CX300. But the journey to developing a fleet of electric aircraft has been a long process — and one that didn’t truly gain traction until Clark met Martine Rothblatt, founder and CEO of United Therapeutics.
Recognizing the value of electric propulsion in aviation and its benefits in medical cargo logistics, Rothblatt became an early supporter of Beta’s work in developing a zero-emissions aircraft, which the company plans to use to transport life-saving human organs to hospitals and transplant centers.
“That gave us the opportunity to focus on a mission, and start building an airplane,” Clark said. “There haven’t been a lot of lows for Beta since Martine stepped in.”
That was in 2017. Today, several eVTOL firms have emerged onto the scene, hopeful about certifying and commercializing eVTOL aircraft in the U.S. by the middle of the decade. Beta is one of the frontrunners, but the Burlington, Vermont-based company is taking a different approach to its rivals on nearly all aspects of its eVTOL program.
“We don’t spend a lot of resources on marketing. We don’t spend a lot of resources on making promises,” Clark said. “We let the engineering and the technical progress be the star.”
Clark is an engineer and pilot at heart, originally founding the company as an engineering think tank and research and development shop to build propulsion systems to power electric aviation.
“We quickly learned that designing an electric aircraft was a holistic process,” Clark said. Not only does it encompass high energy density batteries and high power density motors, but it also involves determining how the systems integrate together. “When we realized that, we started designing our own aircraft chargers, control systems, and integration of that propulsion system.”
That was the premise behind Beta’s first electric aircraft, Ava, an eight-rotor thrust vectoring, liquid-cooled aircraft. Through hundreds of test flights, the team quickly learned “what not to do in an eVTOL aircraft,” Clark said. “We shifted and designed an aircraft that we believe is a commercially viable aircraft with an intent to certify. We call that Alia.”
Developing next-generation aircraft
Beta’s Alia-250 eVTOL is a lift-plus-cruise aircraft, powered by a distributed electric propulsion system with five electric motors, four VTOL propellers and one pusher propeller. The aircraft is targeting a maximum range of 250 nautical miles (288 miles or 463 kilometers), and designed to carry 1,400 pounds (635 kilograms) of payload — or a pilot and five passengers.
Its motors and inverters are designed in-house to sync with the batteries and flight controllers, said Manon Belzile, lead motors engineer at Beta. The result is a high energy efficient propulsion system that Beta claims maximizes the range of its batteries, meaning the propulsion system will maintain its high performance throughout the system’s lifecycle.
“This is a game-changer compared to combustion engines, which over time, their performance and efficiency reduces,” Belzile said. “The second big advantage is that the maintenance on electric propulsion is going to be very limited.”
The company intends to certify and manufacture its propulsion system vertically, and plans to incorporate the system into both its Alia-250 eVTOL and its CX300 eCTOL. In fact, the entire structure of the CX300, including its avionics, interior, and pusher motor, will closely mirror the Alia-250. The main difference is it won’t have the overhead lifting propellers.
“That gives us an exceptionally high performing CX300 aircraft that, with the addition of the lift kit, can then be a VTOL aircraft,” Clark said.
To help with its engineering process, the company turns to its immersive flight simulators — a small three-degrees-of-freedom motion platform, and a larger full-scale replica of the Alia-250 cockpit inside a 200-degree dome.
“Before anything ever gets on the aircraft, we make sure we’ve flown it in the simulator with pilots in the loop,” said Vincent Moeykens, head of flight simulator software at Beta. “We evaluate the different characteristics of whatever change is being made, and then we collect feedback and iterate on that before we put it on the real aircraft.”
The flight simulators are also useful tools for flight test preparation and pilot training, Moeykens said.
In addition to its aircraft, Beta is closing the propulsion system loop by developing its own multimodal charging infrastructure. The chargers — the most recent design being the Charge Cube — are developed to support different electric aircraft types, including those of its competitors, as well as various electric ground vehicles.
“The Charge Cube solves a number of problems that standard chargers have,” said Chip Palombini, head of the charging infrastructure team at Beta. “Standard chargers are typically too tall to use with aircraft and their cable reach is too short. The Charge Cube is a much shorter form factor with a 50-foot [15-meter] cable that’s really optimized for use with electric aircraft.”
Beta currently has nearly a dozen charging sites operating in the U.S., with 54 more sites in the permitting or construction stage. The company’s ultimate goal is to set up charging networks in Europe, Asia and Australia as well.
“We found that this is very appreciated both by the industry and our customers who have multiple [types of] electric vehicles and they want one charger to charge them all,” Clark said. “It gives us a path to a true sustainable aviation future that didn’t previously exist.”
Certifying electric aviation
With the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) decision in 2022 to change how winged eVTOL aircraft would be certified, developers like Beta are waiting on the regulator to finalize special federal aviation regulations (SFARS) for operations and pilot training — expected to be ready sometime in 2024.
Despite setting out to develop an eVTOL aircraft, Beta said it intends to type certify its CX300 eCTOL with the FAA first (under part 23), in 2025. The company recently received its G-1 certification basis from the FAA with zero special conditions, giving Beta a clear set of requirements to follow for the CX300.
“What’s interesting about that is it gives us an aircraft that we can sell today for a mission that the customers want to solve, which is an airport-to-airport zero carbon emissions cargo and logistics aircraft,” Clark said.
Beta has carried out extensive flight testing on both its CX300 and Alia-250, largely focusing on wingborne flight, distance flying and battery charging with its CX300, and hover and transition flight with its Alia-250.
Beta accomplished its first-ever hover flight in 2019 using its Ava aircraft, and crewed transition flight envelope expansion in 2023 with its Alia-250. In fact, Beta is currently the only eVTOL developer in North America flying with a pilot on board — a milestone that the company felt was crucial to tackle early.
“We fly with people on board right now because that’s how we’re going to be flying in the future,” Clark said. “We are not going to introduce pilots just before we launch. Pilots are part and parcel of the design of the aircraft, and therefore we fly manned missions.”
This approach to flight testing means the aircraft needs to be safe for flight operations from day one. The company has also had its own partners and customers fly its electric aircraft, including military pilots, FAA pilots, and Rothblatt from United Therapeutics, along with its own employees.
“One of the other reasons we put pilots in the cockpit is that a big part of safe aircraft design is human factors — how the pilots interpret the aircraft,” Clark said. “We’re introducing new systems, batteries, power distribution, branch circuit protection on primary propulsion, fly-by-wire systems, and of course, electric inverters and motors. We need to make sure that we get that right from a human factors perspective.”
The company has checked off a number of flight milestones in the past year, including
a piloted multi-mission cross-country flight last summer. This saw it clock a total of 2,000 NM (3,700 km) in a round trip from Plattsburgh, New York; to Bentonville, Arkansas; with stops along the way to recharge on its own infrastructure. This was followed by a second multi-mission flight from New York to Kentucky in December 2022, this time covering a total of 1,300 NM (1,400 km).
Adding to its list of milestones, the company set a new distance record, clocking 336 NM (622 km) on a single charge while flying within New York state from Jamestown to Plattsburgh. Beta also conducted a flight demonstration in Westchester, New York, becoming the first electric aircraft to fly in the greater New York airspace, and completed qualitative evaluation flights with the FAA, U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army test pilots — becoming the first (and only, to date) eVTOL aircraft flown by the defense branches and regulator.
“What that says about our aircraft is the confidence that’s been placed in us by the regulatory environment that allows us to fly this aircraft in some of the most complex airspace in the country,” said Chris Caputo, a test pilot at Beta with more than 10,000 flight hours in military and commercial missions.
Caputo describes the aircraft as “very intuitive to fly. It’s very stable. The major mass of the aircraft is in the belly, so all the stick and rudder skills are very transferable, whether you’re in an A-10, F-16, or 757. The major difference is the simplicity of the overall system and understanding the failure modes and how to deal with those.”
When Vertical visited Beta in June, the company was getting ready to fly demonstration missions with a customer throughout New England to collaborate on cargo delivery applications. The aircraft operated within the limitations of an experimental market survey aircraft, “doing real missions but not getting paid for them,” Clark said.
A sustainable way of doing business
While a lot of the focus in the eVTOL sector is on passenger transportation, Beta is taking yet another different approach when it comes to launch markets for its aircraft.
“Passenger aviation is a huge market,” Clark said. “It’s a great opportunity and we’re definitely going to get there, but we’re taking the stepwise approach through military, medical, and cargo on our path to a passenger aircraft.”
The company has made progress in developing its customer base around these missions. Along with United Therapeutics, Beta has garnered interest from Bristow Group, UPS, Blade Air Mobility, LCI, and Air New Zealand, which have all agreed to be early customers of one or both of Beta’s aircraft models. The company is also partners with the Air Force and Army.
And unlike some of its eVTOL rivals, Beta is choosing not to operate its own aircraft, opting instead to work with existing part 135 and 121 operators that want to create a sustainable fleet to move products and people throughout the country and the world.
“We have a lot to do to certify electric aviation, and partnering with those operators is not only a good strategy, it’s the most efficient and safe way to bring these to market,” Clark said.
From a maintenance perspective, Belzile said operators should see reduced cost and downtime with an electric aircraft. For example, she said it would take about 30 minutes to install a new motor on an electric aircraft compared to 1.5 days to install a new gas turbine on a helicopter.
“The operation costs are significantly lower as well,” Belzile said. “If we fly 200 nautical miles with our aircraft, it’s about $15 to $17 of electricity, whereas a Cessna Caravan would be between $600 and $800 of jet fuel. Not only is it great for the environment, it’s also great for the wallets.”
With an aircraft nearly ready for certification, and two full-scale prototypes flying crewed tests almost daily, the company is now focusing its attention on manufacturing its electric aircraft.
“It is that transition from R&D to manufacturing, and we are really ready to buckle down and build airplanes,” said Rayan El-Kotob, manufacturing engineer at Beta. “I think it is a great pivot point for companies to show a lot of growth.”
In June 2022, Beta broke ground on its new 188,500-square-foot (17,500-square-meter) manufacturing facility, which is on track to come online and begin building its first aircraft this fall. This will be the first scaled manufacturing facility for electric aircraft in the U.S., and what Beta believes to be the largest net-zero manufacturing facility east of the Mississippi River.
“That took a lot of time and effort both on the logistics, the permitting, the actual construction,” Clark said. “Everybody thinks about manufacturing as a big building and a bunch of people, but there’s so much engineering that goes into that.”
When building aircraft, the production certification is just as important as the type certification, Clark said, “so everything from incoming inspection, quality controls, inventory, all of the ERP [enterprise resource planning] systems, those have been major milestones to get through.”
Preparing for the future of aviation
“The biggest challenge that we’re going to face in training folks in this new industry is there are a lot of different [eVTOL] designs out there,” Caputo said. “The biggest areas that we’re going to need to focus on are the systems knowledge and the different pilot vehicle interface in the displays — understanding a very complex integration with a battery management system and how that information is displayed to the pilot.”
In an effort to train up skilled talent in the eVTOL sector, Beta has partnered with aviation training company CAE to develop a training program for next-generation electric aircraft pilots and maintenance technicians. Beta said the curriculum will be designed specifically around its Alia-250 aircraft and will be made available to its customer operators to train their teams.
Beta is also working with the Burlington Technical Center and other local vocational schools to ensure that students are trained in the areas of fly-by-wire flight controls, carbon fiber composites, and electric motors, so they’re prepared to work on future eVTOL aircraft.
Overall, Caputo contends that Beta’s vehicle is a “simple aircraft to maintain,” and many of the existing skills in aerospace engineering can be transferable to the eVTOL sector. The company also believes that novel eVTOL technology will actually attract prospective pilots and maintenance engineers to enter the nascent sector.
That’s how Colton Poulin ended up at Beta. Poulin is an electronics engineer and intern who joined the company three years ago after touring the facility and witnessing the development of next-generation electric aircraft.
“I was intrigued by it and I knew it was something that I wanted to pursue,” said Poulin, who works with the flight controls and sims teams at Beta. “I was going into electrical engineering, so to me, that seemed like a great fit.”
Beta provides new opportunities for interns like Poulin to get hands-on experience in working on electric aircraft.
“Every day I experience a new opportunity, even if it’s a small thing like finding a new component or new sensor that I haven’t used yet,” Poulin said. “Everybody at Beta wants to share their knowledge, so to be able to have that opportunity to absorb all the information that every engineer at Beta wants to share has been really great.”