Grenchen Airport, November 23rd 2020
smartflyer ltd receives the InnoPrix of Baloise Bank SoBa Solothurn for the development of the hybrid-electric SFX1 touring aircraft. The team of the start-up company from Grenchen is very pleased about the award and regards the prize as an incentive for further development work.
watch our video about the project with english subtitle:
With the SFX1, smartflyer ltd is developing a hybrid-electric aircraft with four seats, which emits 50% less CO2, is 60% quieter and still flies over a distance of 750 km. The electric drive is more efficient and easier to maintain, so that the operating costs are 33% lower. The aircraft is designed for series production and for certification according to the standards of the European Aviation Agency EASA. The smartflyer SFX1 will surprise you with a new quality of flying. Pilots and passengers will be able to talk on board without headphones. Take-off and landing are always carried out purely electrically, which will have an advantage in terms of noise emissions in populated areas.
A striking feature of the smartflyer SFX1 is the position of the propeller at the rear of the fin. The air thus flows laminar onto the propeller and the thrust can flow more or less freely. As a result, the aircraft achieves an efficiency increase of plus 30% compared to a conventional propulsion configuration.
The founder and CEO of smartflyer ltd is the Grenchen professional pilot Rolf Stuber. He was also the initiator of the Smartflyer Challenge, the fly-in and symposium for electric aviation, which takes place every year in mid-September at Grenchen Airport. The event has already been successfully held four times and is called Electrifly-In Switzerland since this year. The location of Grenchen with its innovative and future-oriented industries has thus also become the European hotspot for electric aviation.
The smartflyer ltd was founded in April 2016. The basis was a business plan with which the Federal Office for Civil Aviation was able to establish the aircraft development project under the umbrella of the Special Financing Aviation. The team’s first major success was in the spring of this year, when under the critical eyes of the FOCA, the functioning of the drive train was demonstrated. The next step will be the construction of the airframe by summer 2021, which will then be followed by system integration. The maiden flight is planned for summer 2023. Five years are planned for certification and the establishment of series production. After that, five to ten aircraft per year will roll off the production line at the Grenchen business location.