Bye's Sunflyer rebranded as eFlyer

Bye Aerospace (Englewood, Colo., U.S.) announced April 11 that it has rebranded its family of electric aircraft formerly known as Sun Flyer to eFlyer. George E. Bye, Founder and CEO of Bye Aerospace, says the new name more accurately represents the aircraft’s all-electric propulsion system.

“We originally thought solar cells would be standard on the airplane’s wings,” Bye says. “However, with eFlyer’s primary markets being flight training and air taxi services, it makes more sense to make the price of the airplane as reasonable as possible.” 

The eFlyer family of aircraft, including the 2-seat eFlyer 2 and the 4-seat eFlyer 4, aims to be the first FAA-certified, practical, all-electric airplanes to serve the flight training and general aviation markets. 

To date, Bye Aerospace has received 294 total customer commitments for both aircraft, including a recent agreement with the Sweden-based aviation training institute OSM Aviation Academy (Västerås, Sweden) to purchase 60 eFlyer 2s. Norwegian partner, Elfly AS (Bergen, Hordaland), has also added 10 new eFlyer deposits, for a total of 18 deposits.
 
Bye Aerospace is working with Garmin’s engineering team to implement the G3X integrated flight display onto the eFlyer 2. Siemens will provide electric propulsion systems for the aircraft — the 57 lb. SP70D motor with a 90kW peak rating (120 HP), and a continuous power setting of up to 70kW (94 HP). The eFlyer 2 successfully completed its first official flight test with a Siemens electric propulsion motor in February at Centennial Airport, south of Denver, Colo., U.S.