A Vermont tech company developing electric aircraft announced this week it has begun the permitting process to build a 270,000 square-foot manufacturing facility at the Burlington International Airport.
BETA Technologies is flying and testing state-of-the-art electric aircraft. The company has secured contracts with United Therapeutics, UPS, the U.S. Air Force and Blade. The Amazon Climate Pledge Fund is among the investors in the company.
BETA founder and CEO Kyle Clark says aviation has been lagging behind every other form of transportation because it had previously been thought impossible to electrify an airplane. He says technology has crossed a threshold making electric aviation commercially viable. “We believe by developing an aircraft that’ll have a meaningful payload, something that is over a thousand pounds, and a meaningful range, over 200 nautical miles, that we can both perform commercially viable missions of moving packages, cargo, medical supplies and also push on the heels of every larger and faster and longer range jet in the air to become better themselves.”
The company’s electric aircraft operates with zero emissions. The company has secured sufficient financing and contracts to begin the permitting process to build a training and production plant. Clark says the planned facility will produce 250 to 400 EV aircraft a year and create hundreds of jobs. “Obviously the level of automation and how many shifts we run will produce that swing in total capacity. And we have just over 200 people right now doing the certification, the engineering and the flight tests. We anticipate adding over the next year about 200 people. And at full capacity that particular facility will lean into about 500 people, again depending on the level of automation and other things that we end up employing. So my estimate would be at the time that we hit capacity at that plant before we start looking to our next steps about 800 people.”
Clark adds investments have been secured for initial FAA civil certification. “As publically known we have a $48 million contract with UT – United Therapeutics. Another 44 with the Air Force. And a number of other paying customers. So with the $300 plus million dollars investment we just took plus a greater amount in customer deposits and contracted programs it adds up to something just under a billion dollars which gives us enough to get through certification into production.”
BETA Technologies is conducting test flights from a facility at the former Plattsburgh Air Force Base. Kyle Clark says that facility remains integral to the company’s overall strategy. “I can’t think of a better flight test airport which gives us a lot of freedom to operate and also building elements of the airplane. So we see a lot of growth over there both in flight test, flight test support, testing of the individual systems and then production of a couple elements of the propulsion system.”
BETA co-founder Katie Clark says the new facility provides an opportunity to engage the community. “We are also hoping to create a center for culture and education where we can expose the community, we can expose kids in the community, to aviation and opportunities within the aviation world.”
While BETA is currently flying and testing cargo craft, Clark says the technology can and will be used on larger passenger aircraft. “There’s a lot of companies that are already starting to work on hybrid, hybrid-electric, fuel cell powered. We have a lot of stuff on the drawing board. We’re really focused on certifying this six passenger and/or cargo aircraft. But as soon as this awesome development team here puts this through certification we will immediately lean into our next aircraft. This one aircraft gets a lot of press because it’s real and it’s flying. But there’s a lot of really interesting aircraft on the tail.”
Groundbreaking on BETA Technologies’ production facility is planned for the fall.
The current sale price of each of its EV aircraft is about $4 million.
