from NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
From the Telegraph:
A pioneering hydrogen plane start-up is seeking to raise funds to secure its future amid a US backlash against zero-carbon technologies.
ZeroAvia, based in Gloucestershire, plans to sell a stake to an established aerospace or defence business to raise cash and gain help in commercialising its hydrogen fuel cells.
Christine Ourmières-Widener, the company’s chairman, said the equity sale would be part of a fundraising aimed at generating about £20m, which could take place before the end of the year.
She said ZeroAvia was also close to announcing a new chief executive after Val Miftakhov, its founder, quit the post in May, stoking speculation that the business was close to collapse.
The company endured a torrid 2025 after Donald Trump cut support for a hydrogen sector that had won backing from the Biden administration.
The change in political sentiment meant a fundraising last December failed to raise the targeted £50m, prompting ZeroAvia to scrap plans to develop full hydrogen power-trains.
It also shut down an electric-motor production site in Seattle and dismissed more than half its workforce, consolidating its business at Kemble airfield in the Cotswolds, where around 100 people continue to develop fuel cells.
Ms Ourmières-Widener said ZeroAvia had cash left from last year’s £23m fundraising but wanted to boost its reserves to take its product through to market in the next two years, with the first firm orders expected in the next few months.
The former chief executive of CityJet, Flybe and Portuguese flag carrier TAP said that while 2025 was “really tough”, the dial may be swinging back towards hydrogen as the Iran war and closure of the Strait of Hormuz highlighted the perils of depending on oil.
Full story here.
If it was at all feasible, aircraft manufacturers and the likes of Rolls Royce would be gobbling up the technology.
It clearly is not, which is why the whole business model depends on government handouts.
Ms O-W thinks the Iran war will reignite interest in hydrogen. She obviously is not aware that 99% of the world’s hydrogen production comes from fossil fuels, predominantly natural gas.
Less than 1% comes from electrolysis.
Perhaps she thinks it comes out of thin air?
