U.S. hybrid-electric propulsion developer Ampaire has acquired electric aero tow startup Magpie Aviation, part of its plan to branch out into new applications and expand its customer base through strategic mergers and acquisitions.
California-based Magpie has been developing an aero tow concept in which electric aircraft will be tethered to an all-electric tow aircraft to extend their range by hundreds of miles.
In acquiring Magpie, Ampaire said it was interested in applying its hybrid-electric technology to Magpie’s aero tow concept, which it will continue to develop through the latter company’s existing contract with the U.S. Air Force through the AFWERX Agility Prime Program.
“Magpie has a contract around proving out that towing system and the way it can integrate electric propulsion systems,” Ampaire founder and CEO Kevin Noertker tells the AAM Report. “That fits really well with what we’re doing at Ampaire and our track record of supporting new use cases with the Department of Defense.”
The transaction comes after Ampaire last July acquired Tayln Air, the developer of a two-stage electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) concept in which a lift vehicle raises a cruise vehicle to altitude before they separate and the lift vehicle returns to its origin point.
Similar to the Magpie deal, the acquisition of Talyn also allowed Ampaire to tap into critical intellectual property and customer contracts with the U.S. Defense Department (DOD).
“Talyn and Magpie were approaching similar problems in very different ways,” Noertker says. “Both companies are looking at the two-body aircraft concept, towed or connected, but Talyn is about eVTOL enablement, whereas Magpie is about range enablement. So, different solutions sets and slightly different underlying technology, but we see both as pieces that we can add into our portfolio of technologies that we can leverage for customers.”
Noertker also said that he sees potentially large opportunities for two-stage connected or towed aircraft concepts in defense applications, particularly in a hybrid configuration for improved performance.
“When you’re looking toward DOD applications where carried payload or dropped payload or secondary vehicles might open up new mission sets—maybe carrying cargo, maybe carrying other types of payloads—it’s in those defense use cases where we see more applicability,” he said.
The acquisition comes as Ampaire is continuing to develop its 570-kW AMP-H570 AMP Drive hybrid-electric propulsion system, which it is flight testing on the Eco Caravan testbed, a modified Cessna Caravan.
The company is also developing a 270-kW version called the AMP-H270, which is being flight tested in its Electric EEL testbed, a modified Cessna Skymaster.
In an encouraging trend, Noertker has observed that defense applications for electric aviation are increasingly moving toward hybrid solutions for improved performance and reliability, particularly in complex operating environments without access to electrical infrastructure according to the reports published in aviationweek.com .
“What we continue to see in the defense arena is an evolution toward hybrid electric because fully electric does not serve a sufficient mission set,” Noertker said. “Increasingly we are seeing that recognition among our customer base and it’s translating into a ton of demand … Frankly, we’re just trying to keep up.”
