Elfly

The Elfly Group  is a Norwegian electric aircraft company that is developing the world’s first fully electric seaplane, the Noemi, with the dual aims of improving transport (for people and cargo) in coastal areas and saving 3 megatons of CO₂ emissions by 2050.

The Noemi is to be a twin-motor aircraft with a range of 200km that will be powered by lithium batteries and an electric propulsion system. The plane will be able to carry up to nine passengers or could be modified for various purposes, such as carrying cargo.

As seaplanes can take off from and land on water, they can be far more convenient and feasible for coastal communities, where there may not be any land nearby that is suitable for runways for standard aircraft. Seaplanes can also travel much faster than boats or ferries. Overall, the use of non-polluting short-haul electric seaplanes could be a game changer for coastal communities (on mainlands, islands and inland around fjords and lakes). Since aviation is responsible for 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions and transportation overall for 20%, Elfly hopes to create the greatest possible gains in our shared battle against climate change by targetting emissions from fossil-fuel-based short-haul commuter and cargo flights in coastal areas.

Elfly is using the Dardel system at PDC to run detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations which are used to evaluate and optimise the design of the aircraft. This ultimately improves the performance of the aircraft and is more efficient than building multiple physical models and evaluating them, for example, in wind tunnel experiments.

For questions about this or other PDC business partnerships, please contact business-unit@pdc.kth.se .