Urban Aeronautics

Headquartered in Israel, Urban Aeronautics is an aerospace company dedicated to revolutionizing urban mobility through VTOL aircraft. The company designs aircraft for multiple city applications for air taxi and emergency medical services (EMS). The company’s flagship vehicle, CityHawk, has two designs: one for air taxi and another for EMS.  

The CityHawk is an electric aircraft equipped with multiple hydrogen fuel-cell stacks for power generation, an electric motor, and a fly-by-wire system. By utilizing hydrogen fuel stacks (which are environmentally friendly power systems), the aircraft can generate electricity and emit only heat and water. One notable feature of the CityHawk is its proprietary enclosed rotor system known as FancraftTM, which has been developed exclusively by the company. Due to their compact car size dimensions, CityHawks are perfectly suited for rooftops, making them an ideal choice for urban environments. They have minimal space requirements, allowing rooftops to be easily converted into vertiports with minimal investment, along with the possibility of having multiple vertiports per block. The aircraft can travel a range of 150 km (~90 miles) at a maximum cruise speed of 234 kmph.

Key customers and partnerships

The company has built strong partnerships with leading companies such as Hypoint (for HyPoint’s hydrogen fuel-cell stack technology), Safran (to advance from prototype to mass production stage), Universal Avionics (to integrate advanced certified pilot displays and avionics in the CityHawk), Skyports (infrastructure design considerations for the CityHawk’s vertiports), and Cert Center Canada (for its certification plan).

Funding and financials

In September 2021 , the company secured USD 10 million in Series A funding, with participation from private investors in the US, Brazil, and Israel. The funds were slated for hydrogen-fueled Fancraft technology in its then-latest CityHawk models for inner-city air charter and EMS flights.