BICESTER, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb 4, 2025--
Evolito Limited, proudly announces its collaboration with Flying Whales, a pioneering company in the development of large capacity airships. This partnership marks a significant milestone in sustainable cargo aviation, demonstrating both innovative solutions to real world problems and reducing carbon footprints.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250204051861/en/
Evolito will provide their state-of-the-art D250 electric propulsion motor for the LCA60T airship, which is due to make its debut test flight in 2027. The LCA60T is 200 meters long and has been designed to transport exceptionally heavy loads of up to 60 tonnes. Flying Whales' airships are designed to provide a unique solution for transporting heavy and oversized cargo, especially in regions with limited infrastructure. By utilizing Evolito's advanced motors, Flying Whales aims to create a more efficient and environmentally sustainable mode of transport, contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and promoting greener logistics practices worldwide.
Flying Whales selected Evolito’s D250 electric motor for its airship because of its exceptional power and torque density. Each airship will be powered by 32 D250 motors. Another critical factor for Flying Whales in their choice of electric motor partner was Evolito’s ability to scale production to deliver the quantity of electric motors required to meet Flying Whales’ production forecast.
Evolito’s electric motors are the smallest and lightest in their class. The D250 offers industry leading power density of 18.5kW/kg providing 240kW peak power and weighing 13kg.
In 2023 Evolito was awarded Design Organisation Approval by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority and is working towards POA and ISO9001 later this year which will help to reduce certification costs for Flying Whales.
Vincent Guibout, CEO of Flying Whales said, “When designing an airship, weight is critical. In the three years we have been working together, Evolito has demonstrated the ability to deliver best in class power density from its unique axial flux electric motors along with the ability to ramp production to meet our forecast requirements. There is an excellent synergy between our teams - we share the same passion for enabling electric flight through engineering excellence and innovation - and I look forward to working with Evolito towards the first LCA60T flight and beyond into production and commercial operation.”
Dr. Chris Harris, Evolito CEO and co-founder said, “Flying Whales’ LCA60T airship is a truly inspirational aircraft, demonstrating that electric flight can help solve global challenges - from reducing harmful emissions to delivering critical infrastructure sustainably. Evolito’s unique axial-flux technology enables a new class of lightweight, compact and high-performance electric motor, opening up many new aircraft designs, mission profiles and use-cases -setting new standards in electric propulsion for Aerospace.”
Evolito
http://www.evolito.aero
Evolito is making electric flight a reality by offering world-leading electric axial flux motors, motor controls and battery systems for the aerospace market. Evolito’s electric propulsion systems offer the highest power, torque, and energy densities in class and are inherently more robust than alternative technologies – mission critical in eVTOL, Urban Air Mobility, helicopter and fixed-wing applications. The privately-held company is based in Oxford. Evolito’s investors include B-Flexion and Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE).
Evolito's electric D250 motor (Photo: Business Wire)
Flying Whales LCA60T airship utilising 32 x Evolito D250 electric motors. (Photo: Business Wire)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared ready to deal another setback to transgender people and uphold state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams.
The court's conservative majority, which has repeatedly ruled against transgender Americans in the past year, signaled during more than three hours of arguments it would rule the state bans don't violate either the Constitution or the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.
More than two dozen Republican-led states have adopted bans on female transgender athletes. Lower courts had ruled for the transgender athletes who challenged laws in Idaho and West Virginia.
The legal fight is playing out against the backdrop of a broad effort by President Donald Trump to target transgender Americans, beginning on the first day of his second term and including the ouster of transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
The justices are evaluating claims of sex discrimination lodged by transgender people versus the need for fair competition for women and girls, the main argument made by the states.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who coached his daughters in girls basketball, seemed concerned about a ruling that might undo the effects of Title IX, which has produced dramatic growth in girls and women's sports. Kavanaugh called Title IX an “amazing” and “inspiring” success.
Some girls and women might lose a medal in a competition with transgender athletes, which Kavanaugh called a harm “we can’t sweep aside.”
The three liberal justices seemed focused on trying to marshal a court majority in support of a narrow ruling that would allow the individual transgender athletes involved in the cases to prevail.
A ruling for West Virginia and Idaho would effectively apply to the other two dozen Republican-led states with similar laws.
But the justices soon might be asked to decide about the laws in an additional roughly two dozen states, led by Democrats, that allow transgender athletes to compete on the teams that match their gender identity.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts by the Trump administration and others seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
In the Idaho case, Lindsay Hecox, 25, sued over the state's first-in-the-nation ban for the chance to try out for the women's track and cross-country teams at Boise State University in Idaho. She didn’t make either squad because “she was too slow,” her lawyer, Kathleen Hartnett, told the court Tuesday, but she competed in club-level soccer and running.
Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old high school sophomore, was in the courtroom Tuesday. She has been taking puberty-blocking medication, has publicly identified as a girl since age 8 and has been issued a West Virginia birth certificate recognizing her as female. She is the only transgender person who has sought to compete in girls sports in West Virginia.
Pepper-Jackson has progressed from a back-of-the-pack cross-country runner in middle school to a statewide third-place finish in the discus in just her first year of high school.
Prominent women in sports have weighed in on both sides. Tennis champion Martina Navratilova, swimmers Summer Sanders and Donna de Varona and beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh-Jennings are supporting the state bans. Soccer stars Megan Rapinoe and Becky Sauerbrunn and basketball players Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart back the transgender athletes.
In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled LGBTQ people are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace, finding that “sex plays an unmistakable role” in employers’ decisions to punish transgender people for traits and behavior they otherwise tolerate.
But last year, the six conservative justices declined to apply the same sort of analysis when they upheld state bans on gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
Chief Justice John Roberts signaled Tuesday he sees differences between the 2020 case, in which he supported the claims of discrimination, and the current dispute.
The states supporting the prohibitions on transgender athletes argue there is no reason to extend the ruling barring workplace discrimination to Title IX.
Idaho's law, state Solicitor General Alan Hurst, said, is “necessary for fair competition because, where sports are concerned, men and women are obviously not the same.”
Lawyers for Pepper-Jackson argue that such distinctions generally make sense, but that their client has none of those advantages because of the unique circumstances of her early transition. In Hecox's case, her lawyers want the court to dismiss the case because she has forsworn trying to play on women's teams.
NCAA president Charlie Baker told Congress in 2024 that he was aware of only 10 transgender athletes out of more than a half-million students on college teams. But despite the small numbers, the issue has taken on outsize importance.
Baker's NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women’s sports after Trump, a Republican, signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
A decision is expected by early summer.
Follow the AP's coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.
Protesters gather outside the Supreme Court as it hears arguments over state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Protesters gather outside the Supreme Court as it hears arguments over state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Protesters wave transgender pride flags outside the Supreme Court as it hears arguments over state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
