VoltAero Is On Track For First Cassio 330 Flight By Year-End

GENEVA—French startup VoltAero said the first flight of its full-scale Cassio 330 hybrid electric aircraft is still on track for the end of this year—but not in a hybrid configuration.

The company in recent months has been ground-testing a full-scale prototype of its hybrid powertrain, which was designed around a Safran Electric & Power ENGINeUS 100 electric motor and Kawasaki’s four-cylinder internal-combustion engine.

At the same time, VoltAero has been testing a version of its hybrid electric propulsion system in its Cassio S testbed, a modified Cessna 337 Skymaster, while it continues to develop its first Cassio 330 prototype, expected to be completed in the coming months. 

That initial aircraft is planned to launch into a company testing program around the end of this year using only the thermal engine, Botti said, while the first integrated hybrid electric flights are expected to occur several months later in early 2025.

“We’re developing the full-scale plane, and we will fly it on pure thermal,” Botti told Aviation Week Network ShowNews on the sidelines of the European Business Aviation Conference and Exhibition (EBACE) here. “The reason is that we don’t want to scare [the European Union Aviation Safety Agency]. We need to first make them comfortable with the aerodynamics as well as the propeller. Once they’re comfortable with that, we will insert the powertrain technology that we’re validating on the bench, along with the batteries.”

When the full-scale powertrain has been validated on the ground, VoltAero may first begin flight-testing it using its Cassio S testbed, which the company had on static display at EBACE 2024. “We’ve been flying around the Cassio S for a long time, and we’re very comfortable with it, so we think it may make more sense to first validate the hybrid system there before we integrate it into the production aircraft,” Botti said.

While the launch product is being designed around Kawasaki’s four-cylinder engine, Botti said VoltAero eventually plans to incorporate a more powerful, six-cylinder version, which he said will be key to enabling larger variants of the Cassio aircraft.

“The six-cylinder from Kawasaki is an engine that is being specifically developed for aviation,” Botti noted. “For us, it’s a big step, and it will also give us enough power to go beyond the five seats in our launch product to six seats or possibly more. And very importantly, that engine is also developed to be hydrogen-compatible, so in the future we could potentially develop a hydrogen-electric aircraft.”

VoltAero is targeting European Union Aviation Safety Agency type certification of the Cassio 330 by the end of 2025.