Supernal opens Fremont R&D facility

Supernal is opening its primary R&D facility in Fremont, California, it announced today.

The opening marks the third, and last, facility Supernal will open this year, after revealing it will open engineering headquarters in Irvine, California and a policy and commercial hub in Washington, D.C.

Fremont’s close ties to the “tech ecosystem” of Silicon Valley were the primary reason behind the decision to locate there. Supernal’s 72,000sqft facility – located in the Scott Creek Business Park – serves as a home base to more than 100 employees across its battery, intelligent systems, autonomy and core operations teams.

“Batteries are the linchpin of Advanced Air Mobility and critical to powering the next generation of flight, which we see as everyday electric air travel,” said Jaiwon Shin, president of Hyundai Motor Group and CEO of Supernal. 

“Fremont, with its vibrant tech ecosystem, offers a robust talent pool that will enable Supernal to continue advancing the power and energy capabilities of safe aviation-grade batteries,” he added.

Supernal, which was established in 2020 as theUAM arm of Hyundai Motor Group, is taking what it calls an “open ecosystem approach” to developing batteries that meet commercial aviation’s standards. This involves harnessing in-house talent and helping to grow the pool of aviation suppliers in this emerging vertical, it said.

Revolution.Aero recently spoke to Supernal’s head of Business Development, Matthew Sattler, when talking about batteries he told us: “Battery technology is improving at a pretty remarkable rate, essentially doubling cell performance every two to three years or so. The advantage of being a second-mover in this space allows us to design around future performance enhancements and integrate them into the aircraft programme as and when available.”