Hamburg, 18 October 2021 – The Sustainable Aero Lab has successfully finished its first-ever season of startup mentoring. Here are the sustainable aviation startups that made up the first cohort:
Airflow – USA
Airflow is building a hybrid-electric short take-off and landing (STOL) aircraft for middle-mile logistics, responding to the massively growing market in e-commerce. Airflow is not just designing a vehicle, but the entire operating environment. The concept is scalable both in terms of aircraft size, propulsion technology (e.g. hydrogen), and variants (e.g. for passenger operations). During its participation in Sustainable Aero Lab, Airflow was able to generate potential 11 customers already, with Letters of intent for a revenue of 600 Million USD.
Mobius.Energy - USA
Aviation poses specific challenges for batteries. Mobius.Energy his building a revolutionary safe, light, and energy-efficient battery with discharge and recharge rate. The product will be applicable to the entire electric and hybrid-electric aircraft market. The Sustainable Aero Lab graduate recently announced an investment commitment from GEM of 50 Million USD.
Fusion Engineering - Netherlands
The market for commercial drones is set to rapidly scale, but drones still crash several orders of magnitude more frequently than air vehicles in commercial aviation. Fusion Engineering is developing a flight control system for commercial drones. The software brings unprecedented safety and reliability for drone operations.
Shift Aviation – Ireland
In today’s aviation, holding patterns are a source for massively increased unnecessary emissions. Shift Aviation provides an air traffic predictive management system, negotiating arrival slots between airports and airlines, thereby reducing delays, fuel waste and CO2 emissions. The system was developed by an active airline pilot.
HeronFan - Germany
HeronFan is an early startup from Hamburg, developing an entirely new engine design with the turbine integrated into the fan. While retaining the efficiency of the turbofan, the new engine will have lower part count, lower weight and require less maintenance.
Moonware - USA
San Francisco based Moonware is automating ground operations for airports and vertiports. At the heart of the product is a fleet management software that helps airports and airlines optimize the utilization of the entire ground operations and improve turnaround times for airplanes. It also allows for autonomous and electric pushback vehicles. The startup is currently setting up a pilot case with a leading international airline.
Aviation offers great potential for new and innovative players
Discussions at recent IATA General Meeting in Boston show how conservative the bulk of the aerospace community still is: While aviation industry wants to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, only 13% of this abatement is expected to come from new propulsion technologies. As with other industries that have been disrupted in the past 15 years, this leaves potential for new and innovative players in aviation who think that transformation will happen much faster than anticipated.
With this in mind, the Sustainable Aero Lab was founded in January 2021, a global fast track program for startups and projects that can prove their tangible impact on reducing the climate footprint of aviation. Startups are being mentored by the Who-is-Who of aviation and venture capital.
“When looking at the climate challenge, aviation is the hardest of all industries to decarbonize. Our motivation is to build a network that helps find the answers to this global challenge of an entire generation. When we started the Sustainable Aero Lab, we were unsure how the rather conservative aviation industry would react to the speed and the agility of this program set up. We ended up being overwhelmed the feedback and interest we received in the first season, and are very much looking forward to scaling the initiative with the upcoming cohort - adding more startups, more investors and more corporate sponsors”, says Stephan Uhrenbacher, co-founder and Managing Director.
The more than 20 Mentors at Sustainable Aero Lab include former CTO of Airbus and United Technologies and co-founder of Universal Hydrogen, Paul Eremenko, Ampaire’s SVP and former Boeing and COMAC executive Dr Susan Ying, former Volocopter CTO Jan-Hendrik Boelens, as well as experienced entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. All mentors can be found on www.sustainable.aero/mentors.
Sustainable Aero Lab: Admissions ohne Deadline
Im Sustainable Aero Lab arbeiten Start-ups mit einigen der weltbesten Experten aus den Bereichen Luftfahrt, Venture Capital und Wissenschaft zusammen, um die Entwicklung von Projekten zu kommerziellen Unternehmen zu beschleunigen. Das Sustainable Aero Lab bietet Live-Mentoring-Sitzungen, bei denen alle Mentoren anwesend sind.
Sustainable Aero Lab: Admissions without deadline
In the Sustainable Aero Lab, startups collaborate with some of the world’s best experts in aviation, venture capital and sciences to help accelerate projects into commercially viable businesses. Sustainable Aero Lab offers live mentoring sessions where all mentors are present.
Founders can apply directly via www.sustainable.aero with their pitch deck. The first session of the next cohort will be held on 2nd December 2021.
The next public live event of Sustainable Aero Lab will be held on 3rd November 2021, a Masterclass with Roland Berger. Register directly via www.sustainable.aero.
