Questions have been raised over ZeroAvia’s future plans for its Propulsion Center of Excellence in Everett, Washington after staff were hit with another round of redundancies – the third since August.
ZeroAvia opened the Everett facility in April 2024, pledging that the site would lead its efforts to develop a new 600kW electric propulsion system (EPS) – an electric motor plus its power electronics.
This will be sold as a stand-alone product – it secured its first customer earlier this year – and is also a core part of ZeroAvia’s ZA600 hydrogen fuel cell powertrain.
However, repeated layoffs at the site have left the company’s future plans unclear.
Former company insiders say multiple employees were let go at the end of August and again in early October, accounting for around 20 positions.
Those job losses were followed by more in mid-November, with casualties including the company’s main propulsion engineer, according to posts on LinkedIn.
Neither the number of people impacted by the latest cutbacks, nor the number of staff remaining at Everett have been disclosed, however.
ZeroAvia was not available to comment on the redundancies or its long-term intentions for the facility.
Developing its own EPS without the Everett centre of excellence would be challenging but not impossible, with options for the firm including switching the work to its sites in the UK.
If that proves to be ZeroAvia’s ultimate intention, then those remaining at Everett could be offered the chance to transfer across to the UK business, thus retaining key knowledge.
Even before the latest layoffs, there were signs of the company wanting to grow its electric motor capabilities in the UK. In a recent job advert – dated 23 October – ZeroAvia said it was seeking a “visionary head of motor design to lead the creation and growth of a new electric motor engineering team in the UK”.
The role is focused on “developing cutting-edge propulsion systems across aerospace, automotive, and robotics applications”, the advert states.
But how much progress has been made on the ZA600 EPS development is also unclear. Although the company in February said it had agreed the certification basis for the system with the US Federal Aviation Administration, regulatory approval does not appear close.
Speaking to FlightGlobal at the start of November, ZeroAvia chief executive Val Miftakhov said certification of the EPS was now not due until 2027. This, he said, was due “to the learnings from the test campaign and iterations that we need to do”.
In the meantime, ZeroAvia needs a fresh cash injection in the first quarter of next year to fund its ongoing activities.
Miftakhov has repeatedly said it is close to finalising its Series D funding round for about $150 million.
But in better news for the company, it announced on 17 November that it had received Design Organisation Approval from the UK Civil Aviation Authority, a key step towards certification of its ZA600 powertrain, a milestone also targeted for 2027.
