LIFT Aircraft and Parallel Flight Technologies Announce Hybrid Propulsion Partnership

Parallel Flight Technologies and LIFT Aircraft announced a new collaboration to develop a hybridization solution for LIFT’s HEXA eVTOL aircraft on January 20th. Parallel Flight’s proprietary Parallel Hybrid Electric Multirotor (PHEM) drone technology is an “exponential improvement over existing solutions” in terms of flight time with a heavy payload, yielding increased efficiency and eliminating the large battery used in other hybrids.

Parallel Flight’s core Parallel Hybrid technology can be customized for next generation aircraft, which has the potential to extend HEXA’s flight time from 15 minutes to well over an hour and drastically increase range. If successful, LIFT would offer both all-electric and hybrid eVTOL flights at its vertiports, depending on the flight route and distance. Expanded applications for the LIFT HEXA after hybridization will include manned search and rescue, enhancing first responder capabilities by allowing for substantially quicker response times to remote locations; as well as considerable increases in useful flight durations and ranges for different military platforms.

“Parallel’s hybrid technology can offer the best of both worlds – instant electric torque needed for multirotor flight control combined with very high energy density of liquid fuels. Our all-electric aircraft is designed for short range/short-duration flights – which we believe will be the largest segment in the eVTOL market. However, a hybrid system will allow us to offer a significantly expanded flight area for those wanting to fly longer distances”, says Matt Chasen, Founder and CEO of LIFT Aircraft.

Joshua Resnick, CEO of Parallel Flight Technologies, adds, “LIFT’s revolutionary aircraft architecture is an ideal platform for hybridization using our Parallel Hybrid Electric Multritoror (PHEM) technology. HEXA’s design lends itself to safety, redundancy, and modularity, and I think there will be many use-cases and market opportunities enabled by a joint, hybrid solution.”

Parallel Flight’s transformative UAS technology can be applied across multiple logistics verticals, including real-time and complex healthcare logistics, tactical support for firefighters and first responders, and industrial logistics. By serving as an original equipment manufacturer and service provider, Parallel Flight Technologies is well-positioned to revolutionize drones as a service (DAAS) on a global scale.

Why it’s important: The partnership brings together LIFT Aircraft, maker of the HEXA personal air vehicle, and Parallel, which represents a considerable collaborative agreement that will allow for heavier useful loads to be carried by the HEXA PAV, and ultimately a wider range of applications for logistical and passenger carrying use cases. This announcement reflects the industry’s growing tendency toward adopting hybridized solutions to bridging technological gaps, taking pieces of future state technologies and applying them partially with existing systems providing the reliability required for successful implementation. Over time, these hybrid systems will eventually be fully replaced by the new, more advanced system architectures.

Read the full press release here.