AgustaWestland Project Zero

The AgustaWestland Project Zero is a hybrid tiltrotor and lift-fan aircraft built by AgustaWestland as a technology demonstrator, and it is described as the world's first electric tiltrotor. Management approved a small team under James Wang in December 2010 to build a demonstrator with as many new technologies as possible, and the team worked at Cascina Costa in Italy to a deliberately short schedule. Its two large rotors are driven by electric motors fed from rechargeable batteries, which removed the need for a transmission, hydraulics or a swashplate, and more than 80 percent of the aircraft is composite material. It can be flown by one pilot or operated as an unmanned aircraft. The full-scale demonstrator made its first tethered flight in June 2011, the programme was revealed publicly at Heli-Expo on 4 March 2013 and shown at the Paris Air Show that June, and it won the 2014 Grover E. Bell Award. Flight time was limited to about ten minutes, and the company says it is not a product but an investment in technologies for its other rotorcraft.