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AVIATION

High flyer: Swiss firm H55 wins funds for new electric plane project

A Swiss firm co-founded by one of the key figures in the Solar Impulse project has won Silicon Valley funding towards developing electric aircraft.

Published: 20 February 2018 15:00 CET
High flyer: Swiss firm H55 wins funds for new electric plane project
H55 co-founder Henri Addor. Photo: Henri Addor

Sion-based company Hangar 55 (H55) has been awarded the first-round funding by US venture capital firm NanoDimension, company co-founder André Borschberg announced on Twitter on Tuesday.

An engineer and former fighter pilot, Borschberg also co-founded the Solar Impulse project which led to the first-ever round-the-world flight by a solar airplane – a multi-stage journey completed from 2015 to 2016 that garnered international headlines.

With his new project, Borschberg – along with fellow H55 travellers Sebastien Demont and Gregory Blatt – now hopes to develop and certify clean, safe and quiet electric propulsion systems that can be incorporated into other planes.

“With Solar Impulse the message was about perpetual energy – the ability to fly around the world using only renewable solar energy. H55, which has inherited the know-how acquired with Solar Impulse, will concentrate on the electrification of aircraft, what ever the source of that electricity,” Borschberg told Swiss business magazine Bilan.

H55 unveiled its first aircraft ‘aEro1’ in 2017: a relatively simple one-seat German-made Silence Twister aerobatic flyer fitted with batteries. It could fly for just an hour before those batteries needed charging. A newer version clocked up two hours, at a flying cost of just 3 Swiss francs an hour.

But as Borschberg explained to the science magazine Wired at the time aEro1 was unveiled, the goal is not to try and match Uber and its planned flying cars in terms of excitement.

Instead, the idea is to think small and “prove the safety” of the aviation systems developed so that they get the all-important nod from regulators, allowing new craft, for example, to be allowed to fly over populated areas.

And despite the inherit problems with battery-powered flight – a kilo of aviation fuel contains 30 times more energy than a battery equivalent –Borschberg believes the moment has come to move to electric aircraft.

This is not because he believes batteries are about to suddenly become a lot better, but because of the advantages electric flight offers in terms of both reduced CO2 emissions and in terms of allowing – at some stage in the future – for a complete rethink of airplane design.

Talking to Bilan, Borschberg also highlighted the potential safety benefits and lower maintenance requirements that could derive from developing planes with fewer engines than seen on current aircraft.

TAX

Norway acts to protect economy from coronavirus impact

Norway's government on Friday unveiled a 6.5bn Norwegian kroner financial package to help keep businesses afloat through the coronavirus pandemic.

Published: 13 March 2020 15:51 CET
Norway acts to protect economy from coronavirus impact
Prime Minister Erna Solberg and Finance Minister John Tore Sanner (centre right, far right) making the announcement on Thursday. Photo: Norwegian Government
The government announced it was suspending fees and taxes for the airline industry, and would pay all but the two first days of the salaries of employees temporarily laid off in a bid to improve companies' liquidity.  
 
Prime Minister Erna Solberg said at a press conference that it was “absolutely impossible to make an estimate” of how much the measures would cost the government. 
 
“It all depends on how long this lasts, and how strong the measures we need to have,” she said.  “We are put to a major test. The number of people infected is increasing rapidly, and it is affecting our everyday lives, our health care system and our economy.” 
 
The package followed a surprise rate cut on Thursday from Norges Bank, the country's central bank, which reduced its key interest rate to 1 percent from 1.5 percent. 
 
The Norwegian Institute of Public Health on Friday reported that there had been 131 new cases of infection int he 24 hours up to midnight on Thursday, bringing the national total to 750. 
 
The country is now ranked second in the world after South Korea in the number of infections per capita according to the Worldometers website, with 165 confirmed infections per million inhabitants. 
 
On Thursday Norway saw its first death from the virus, with an elderly patient dying at a hospital in Oslo. 
 
Finance Minister Jan Tore Sanner said it was fortunate the the Norwegian economy had been in such a good state at the time the virus hit. 
 
“The situation is now affecting many parts of the economy and many industries and companies. Fortunately, the Norwegian economy is fundamentally solid,” he told state broadcaster NRK. “We have a good starting point.”
 
In a press release accompanying the announcement, the government said it would also remove the three-day waiting period between the point at which companies stop paying employees' salaries and the time unemployment benefits begin, to help keep the income of those laid off stable. 
 
It said it would also change corporate tax regulations so that companies that are loss-making can re-allocate their losses towards the previous years’ taxed surplus. It will also change the tax regulations so that owners of loss-making companies can postpone payments of wealth tax. 
 
Sanner told NRK that the government was considering other changes to employment taxes to make it easier for companies.  
 
“Should the economic situation worsen, we will also consider measures to stimulate the economy more generally,” he said. 
 
Sanner would give few concrete details of the other exact measures the government would propose, but he said they would all fall into three categories. 
 
  • Immediate measures to avoid bankruptcies and dismissals.
  • Further concrete measures for industries and companies that are particularly hard hit and for the business community as a whole.
  • Broad measures to maintain activity in the economy if necessary.
 
The measures announced received a relatively lukewarm reception from the crisis-hit aviation and travel industries. 
 
“The measures presented today are still not sufficient given the very special emergency situation in the airline industry,” John Echoff, press officer for the airline SAS, wrote to NRK.
 
“Taken as a whole, this will turn out to be too little as this crisis continues developing,” said Kristin Krohn Devold, chief executive of the Norwegian Hospitality Association. “More needs to come in the days ahead.”
 
“We are very clear that this is not enough to avoid a bankruptcy wave across the entire travel and airline industries. But it is a signal that they are willing to listen.” 
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