• 26 Aug 2024 12:58 PM
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ERC Emerges from Stealth

By Mike Hirschberg, VFS Director of Strategy
Vertiflite September/October 2024

Featured Image: ERC’s unveiling ceremony in Ottobrunn for the fullscale, full-weight Romeo prototype. (All ERC images)

Founded in 2019, ERC System GmbH is based in Ottobrunn, Germany, just outside of Munich. Although the company has been a VFS corporate member since just after it was founded, it came out of stealth mode with an unveiling of its full-scale, full-mass prototype on July 3, 2024. The company is focused on developing and certifying an emergency medical service (EMS) electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, though initially targeting patient transfers rather than roadside pickups.

“eVTOLs are three times faster than ambulances and three times more cost-effective than helicopters,” said ERC CEO Dr. David Löbl in a news release. In the US and Europe combined, there is a total of around 82 million injured and severely ill individuals each year that need urgent medical transportation, the company said. More than 50% of the helicopter EMS transportation in this market is non-emergency and non-crisis transportation needed for patients to be transferred between medical facilities; this is the first priority for ERC.

A typical EMS helicopter costs in the range of €9–15M ($9.8–16.4M); ERC’s aircraft are expected to be about one-third of that cost. In addition, without having to warm up turbine engines, eVTOL aircraft can sortie much faster than a helicopter and are mechanically less complex, reducing the cost of maintenance and operations.

Charlie Production Model
ERC’s Charlie production model design is a three-person EMS eVTOL aircraft. The aircraft will carry a single pilot, a paramedic and one patient, plus medical-related equipment. There are doors on either side of the cockpit, one on the side of the fuselage and rear clamshell doors for the patient stretcher to be inserted and extracted.

The aircraft is a high-wing configuration with lift booms parallel to the fuselage. Each boom features two lift propellers in front of the wing and two behind the wing and supports the inverted V-tail. Two tractor propellers are mounted on the front of the wing for forward flight. The fuselage is made of carbon fiber–reinforced plastic (CFRP) for a high strength-to-weight ratio. The cabin volume is 184 ft³ (5.2 m³) and the rear door opening is 4.5 by 4.5 ft (1.4 by 1.4 m). The company says that the highwing design, large cabin and clamshell doors are designed to “make loading easy, ensuring fast, efficient medical transport.” 

The company plans to certify its Charlie aircraft and enter service in 2029. By 2032, ERC expects to be manufacturing 250 aircraft annually.

Echo and Romeo Demonstrators
ERC has built two full-scale, full-mass battery eVTOL (beVTOL) technology demonstrators. The Echo demonstrator consisted only of the lift system and a center wing box housing the batteries. It was built to test the propulsion system capabilities at full mass in tethered tests.

The recently unveiled Romeo represents the full aircraft configuration — the fuselage, wings, tail and landing gear.

The Echo demonstrator made hundreds of tests in the air and on the ground during the past two years elsewhere in the state of Bavaria, while Romeo (with the same basic configuration of the operational configuration, Charlie) is expected to start flying later this year.

Both technology demonstrators have eight lift propellers, each powered by an electric motor. Romeo will have two tractor propellers for cruise, as well as a fixed, wheeled-tricycle landing gear (Charlie may use skids or a retractable gear).

Although Romeo will also only be flown uncrewed, it has Charlie’s large, panoramic wrap-around windows, which will allow forward, left and right visibility for the pilot, as well as a generously glazed cockpit floor, providing excellent views during landing.

The company highlights its capabilities to build and fly full-scale, full-mass technology demonstrator aircraft to minimize development risks because, the company says, the design challenges multiply as the scale increases. Full-scale technology demonstrators have allowed ERC to understand how the aircraft systems will work in the real world — such as the full-scale propulsion, battery technology and flight control — much earlier in the development process.

Like many eVTOL aircraft, the ERC aircraft are built around distributed electric propulsion (DEP). The aircraft has multiple propellers and electric motors, so if one or two components fail, the remaining propellers and motors can still land the aircraft safely. There are also redundancies of critical components in the sub-systems of the aircraft providing safety through redundancy.

Why Echo, Romeo and Charlie? Those names are the NATO phonetic alphabet to spell “E-R-C.”

Strong Support
The principal backer of ERC is German automotive and aerospace consulting giant, IABG, led by Managing Director Prof. Dr. Rudolf F. Schwarz. The company is also supporting ERC through testing support and engineering expertise. 

Another major supporter is DRF Luftrettung, one of the largest air rescue services in Europe. The helicopters and ambulance aircraft of the non-profit DRF Luftrettung operate from 30 locations in Germany, including emergency rescue missions, transportation of intensive care patients between hospitals, and repatriation flights of patients from outside of Germany.

The Bavarian state government is now also backing an initiative called “eResCopter for Future Interhospital Transports.” The project with the Unterallgäu-Memmingen health region in Bavaria is intended to become a model for a new type of medical mobility concept. For the official launch of the model region, two memorandums of understanding (MOUs) were signed on May 13 — between all those involved in the model region and bilaterally between DRF Luftrettung and IABG/ERC for the development, approval and testing of the aircraft.

Since its foundation, ERC has been collaborating closely with medical experts to tailor Charlie to their requirements. The company is aiming for the eVTOL aircraft to be “safe, low maintenance, user-centric, and cost-effective.” Although no government funding was included with the eResCopter project, ERC is able to have much more transparent and detailed discussions about the German health system and patient transport.

On July 3, leaders from the partner companies, the involved towns and two members of the Bavarian State Parliament — Bavarian Minister of State for Health, Care and Prevention, Judith Gerlach, and her predecessor, Klaus Holetschek, who is now the CSU Party Chairman — attended the unveiling ceremony. “Projects like the eResCopter system show that we have enormous innovation potential in Bavaria,” Gerlach posted on social media.

In addition to CEO David Löbl, many of the founding employees had previously worked at AutoFlight X, the first German subsidiary of the Chinese eVTOL developer, which operated outside of Munich in 2017–2019, resulting in the single-seat AutoFlight V600 ultralight eVTOL demonstrator. The basic configuration was later matured and grown significantly in size into the AutoFlight Prosperity I passenger air taxi and CarryAll cargo eVTOL designs, now nearing certification approval in China.

ERC has now grown to nearly 100 employees, with flight test of Romeo planned for later this year. Five years of stealthy development have prepared the company to continue measured growth to mature the technology and vision for the future of medical transfer electric aviation.