A startup that focuses on high-power density motors (HPDM) has recently been handed $20 million in funding to help take its integrated drive tech to market, potentially bolstering the future of electric aviation, as Interesting Engineering reported.
The company is called H3X and was started by three University of Wisconsin-Madison alums who have been working their way from the market-saturated electric vehicle sector to aviation, where they saw plenty of room for improvement.
In the last couple of years, they've managed to validate their core technology, as Interesting Engineering explained, launching the HPDM-30, HPDM-140, and HPDM-250 integrated motor drives.
By combining the motors' components — the main motor, power delivery system, and gearbox — into one unit, they've managed to shave off weight while still meeting key cooling requirements, per the report.
"With remarkable speed, we've proven that this technology works and has a key role to play in enabling sustainable aviation, decarbonizing the marine and industrial sectors, and unlocking next-generation electrified defense technology," Jason Sylvestre, Co-Founder and CEO of H3X, said in a statement.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy requires propulsion systems for aircraft such as the Boeing 737 to be at least 12 kilowatts per kilogram to sustain a typical five-hour flight. H3X claims that its motors exceed those requirements and are at least three times better than the systems currently available.
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This could help transform the industry from a heavy polluter to a cleaner, greener mode of transportation. According to the European Commission, aviation contributes around 2% of global planet-warming carbon pollution and 13.9% of the transportation sector as a whole.
A combination of gases and particulate matter affect the physical and chemical properties of the atmosphere when they occur at high altitudes, generally magnifying their deleterious warming effects on the climate.
Switching to electric, hybrid electric, or using sustainable air fuels could help stop unnecessary pollution, which impacts air quality, raises global temperatures, and drives extreme weather. It could also help the U.S. reach its goal of net-zero pollution by 2050, as part of the Federal Aviation Administration's Aviation Climate Action Plan.
The company's HPDM-30 and HPDM-250 motors are geared toward drones, undersea remotely operated vehicles, small aircraft, and more, and H3X has already delivered motors to aerospace and defense customers, per a statement.
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The more powerful HPDM-1500 and HPDM-2300 it's developing are megawatt-class machines and, as the company claims, can double aircraft range in some cases. That could have a broad impact on marine and aviation industries, fundamentally changing the way we get around, reducing pollution, and bringing the world closer together.
"Our vision is to become the world's leading supplier of advanced electric motors by 2030 to help enable decarbonization in a lot of these heavy industries," as Sylvestre summarized in a University of Wisconsin-Madison report.
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