Powertrain

Dossier

Jetoptera FTC-250

Around seven to 10 years ago, the aviation industry experienced rapid growth in the number of new eVTOL and eSTOL aircraft companies, each making bold claims over what their electric air vehicles could accomplish entirely on...

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Electric motors

In the uncrewed space today, electric motors are essential to a growing majority of vehicles’ propulsion, whether as VTOL rotors, starter-generators or otherwise. However, movements and happenings in electric motor r&d are marked...

Dossier

Wankel Aviation 350 & 500 cc rotary engines

Wankel Aviation is a German company based in the town of Cottbus, Brandenburg, founded in 2022 as a subsidiary of (and sharing locations with) Wankel SuperTec, which was founded in 2003. As of writing, Wankel Aviation has just eight...

Dossier

NEX Power 15 kW GenSet gas micro-generator

Located in the UK industrial powerhouse of Milton Keynes, NEX Power Ltd., formerly known as Samad Power, is a developer of gas microturbine-based technologies. The company had its genesis at Cranfield University (the birthplace of many...

Dossier

Groupe Danielson Trident 100 TD2 turbodiesel

Just over 10 years ago, we featured Groupe Danielson’s Trident 100 TD2 engine, a 1.1 L, inline three-cylinder turbodiesel designed specifically for the UAV market. Since the company’s 2014 public launch of the Trident series of engines at AUVSI Xponential...

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ECUs

It wasn’t so long ago that suppliers of ECUs and other control electronics solutions were in something of a tight spot. Pre-COVID ramp-ups in their customers’ production targets had filled ECU makers’ books with contracts, but the sudden freezes that happened...

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Motor controllers

Until around ten years ago, manufacturers of electric drones were generally stuck with using hobby-grade ESCs (electronic speed controllers) for control of their electric motors. Such low-quality components frequently suffered from issues such as poor transient...

Dossier

Alpha-Otto REV Force

We featured Michigan-based Strange Development in 2020 (see Issue 33), for its two-stroke, inline, two-cylinder, spark-ignited REVolution engine, integrating a rotary exhaust valve (REV) to leverage forced induction when adjusting its dynamic compression ratio...

Dossier

Suter Industries

With regulations in the EU aimed at curbing and eventually eliminating internal combustion engines in road vehicles, the future of European engines – and particularly the expertise and innovative capacity around them – is likely to lie not amidst the automotive...

Platform One

Organic photovoltaic solar cell works in space

Researchers in the US have developed a flexible, organic, photovoltaic (OPV) solar cell that functions well in space. Space missions often decide on gallium arsenide for its high efficiency and resistance to damage from protons, but it is expensive...