Electric aviation companies to watch: Heart Aerospace

Heart Aerospace closed a $35 million Series A funding round in summer 2021, led by big names, including Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures and United’s venture arm.

Heart Aerospace, a Sweden-based electric aviation startup, is developing a 19-passenger electric aircraft that can travel 250 miles and a backup generator for energy reserve and range extension. The company coined its flagship aircraft Heart ES-19, and United Airlines and commercial aviation holding company Mesa Air Group ordered 200 of Heart Aerospace’s inaugural electric aircrafts.

Last summer, the company closed a $35 million Series A funding round led by big names, including Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures and United’s venture arm. Heart Aerospace spun out of a research project at Sweden-based Chalmers University of Technology in 2018, and the company was a part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2019 cohort. The company’s deal with United and Mesa was announced in conjunction with its Series A and includes an option of purchasing up to 100 additional aircraft, TechCrunch reported.

“We’re not looking to reinvent the wheel. A lot of startups are presenting very novel aircraft architectures, spending several years in subscale testing just to demonstrate the basic functionality of the aircraft,” Anders Forslund said in a press release. “We’ve avoided these pitfalls by relying on a conventional aircraft architecture,” says Forslund. “We can devote almost all our resources to the formal development — bringing this aircraft through certification and into commercial service.”

Heart Aerospace has raised $37.3 million since its inception to develop its electric aircrafts, and the company plans to deliver its first commercial aircraft by 2026. We expect the company will continue to release positive progress updates following a successful flight of a subscale model of its Heart ES-19 aircraft in December. Check out the flight here. greenbiz.com