Editor’s note: This is part of a series profiling six of the Seattle region’s “Uncommon Thinkers”: inventors, scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs transforming industries and driving positive change in the world. They will be recognized at the GeekWire Gala on Dec. 6. Uncommon Thinkers is presented in partnership with Greater Seattle Partners. Read the other profiles here.
When Riona Armesmith moved from Britain to the Seattle area two and a half years ago to become chief technology officer for magniX, a company that’s pioneering electric aviation, she had to take a leap of faith.
Armesmith was leaving one of the world’s best-known manufacturing companies, Rolls-Royce, where she was head of programs for aviation futures. She would be joining a privately held company that builds electric propulsion systems for aircraft that won’t go into commercial service until the mid-2020s. And she’d be bringing her family along for an adventure in a whole new world.
“To move halfway across the world, for me, it was easy,” she says. “For my family, it was harder.”
MagniX and its technical team are facing daunting challenges, ranging from working around the limitations of battery technology to running a gauntlet of regulatory requirements. But Armesmith is unfazed. It’s a technological frontier that’s tailor-made for uncommon thinkers.
“There are many of us that moved here for this job because of the technology, because of what magniX is doing, and because we’ve flown five different aircraft in three years,” she says. “The opportunity to see what you’re doing fly in such a short amount of time — that opportunity is so rare in this industry.”
Armesmith is quick to pay tribute to the team at magniX’s 40,000-square-foot headquarters in Everett, Wash., where scores of employees design, develop and manufacture electric powertrains.
“It’s not one person,” she says. “It’s a collection of extremely talented individuals. I think we’re all a little bit of uncommon thinkers, because we decided to move here to take risks to work at a young aviation company, and work on technology that is unproven. I mean, a couple of years ago, you’d never have said you could fly an aircraft electrically.”
Why are magniX and a host of other companies — ranging from Rolls-Royce to magniX’s Arlington, Wash.-based corporate cousin, Eviation — focusing on electric aviation? The main reason has to do with climate change.
The International Energy Agency says aviation accounts for a relatively small share of global energy-related carbon emissions — 2% in 2022 — but those emissions are rising more rapidly than they are in other transportation sectors, making aviation “one of the most challenging sectors to decarbonize.”
A boon for the planet and for passengers
Affordable zero-emission air travel would be a boon not only for the planet and for the aviation industry, but for passengers as well, Armesmith says. As an example, she cites Canada-based Harbour Air Seaplanes, which is working to convert its planes to use magniX’s electric propulsion units.
Armesmith says flying on a seaplane is an amazing experience. “I enjoy it very much, but you get on the plane and you’re given earplugs,” she says. “It’s really loud, and you stink of fuel all day afterwards.”
Converting Harbour Air’s de Havilland Beaver seaplanes to electric power will make a big difference. “Cabin noise is drastically reduced as a result of not having a [gas-fueled] engine on the front of this thing. And there’s no fuel smell,” Armesmith says. “All around, it’s a much better experience to go and fly in an electric aircraft.”
MagniX’s partnership with Harbour Air led to the first flight of a magniX-equipped electric airplane in 2019. That milestone mission kicked off a test campaign that’s expected to lead to certification in the 2025-2026 time frame. Since then, four other types of aircraft have flown with magniX’s electric propulsion systems:
- A converted Cessna Grand Caravan that’s being tested in partnership with Seattle-based AeroTEC.
- Eviation’s all-electric Alice airplane, which had its first test flight last year.
- An all-electric Robinson 44 helicopter that’s being developed for use by Lung Biotechnology PBC, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics, to deliver organs for medical transplants.
- A de Havilland Dash 8 that was converted by California-based Universal Hydrogen to use a hydrogen fuel cell.
In the two and a half years since Armesmith joined magniX, the company has won a $74.3 million, five-year contract from NASA to demonstrate electric propulsion technologies for aircraft, and has branched out to build hydrogen fuel cells as well as electric motors.
The making of an electromagnetics nerd
Electric power and propulsion has been the focus of Armesmith’s career since she earned her degree in electrical engineering from De Montfort University in Leicester, England, more than a decade ago.
Armesmith started out working on design modifications for industrial electric generators. Eventually, she went to work at Rolls-Royce, where she was put in charge of E-Fan X, a project aimed at demonstrating megawatt-scale hybrid electric propulsion for commercial aircraft.
“It was a big program with a big budget, with a big partnership with Airbus and Siemens and various other suppliers,” she recalls. “I led that program for three and a half, four years. … It was a turning point for the industry, where everyone started thinking, ‘Hey, OK, this is actually possible.'”
Unfortunately, E-Fan X fell victim to the economic effects of the COVID pandemic, Armesmith said. By mid-2020, the project was canceled.
Armesmith stayed on at Rolls-Royce, but the cancellation of E-Fan X was a heavy blow. “I was at Rolls for eight years, and I didn’t get anything flying,” she says.
After E-Fan X, Armesmith took on a wider portfolio of turbine research programs as Rolls-Royce’s head of programs for aviation futures. “That included starting up the hydrogen-burning gas turbine program at Rolls,” she says. “And that was the last thing I did before I left.”
As magniX’s chief technology officer, Armesmith loves to dive into the nuts and bolts of electric aviation. “I’m just a huge nerd about electromagnetics. That’s how I started this out. I like electronics. I like the fact that you can make electricity from, you know, turning a magnet. … You don’t become a CTO without being a bit of a nerd,” she says with a laugh.
Deep dives into engineering
Erika Holtz, Harbour Air’s project manager and chief engineer for the company’s electrification project, has shared some of Armesmith’s deep dives into details.
“We’re very good at chasing rabbits down rabbit holes,” she says. “We’re all at a fairly high level of advancement, but at the same time we are all engineers and designers — at heart, scientists. So, you might say, ‘OK, here’s a high-level topic,’ but it doesn’t stop Riona or any of us from saying, ‘I would like to understand more about that topic,’ and go deep-diving all the way down to the bottom.”
Holtz enjoys the what-if conversations she has with Armesmith.
“She’s called me and said, ‘You know, we’re thinking about doing this. What do you think?'” Holtz says. “And we’ll do a thought exercise on does that work, or does that not work? She’s got the engine background. We’ve got the aircraft background. And we can have a conversation that says, OK, what about that weird new technology that you’re talking about over here? How realistic is it for the particular aircraft that we’re interested in?”
One topic that Armesmith is reluctant to dive into these days has to do with her status as a woman in a historically male-dominated industry. She’s so done with discussing that issue.
“I love what I do,” she says. “We are changing the world with what we do. I’d rather talk about that than about being a woman in engineering.”
Armesmith, who’s 34 years old, is likely to keep working in aerospace — and keep changing the world — for decades to come. But she’s already thinking about the far-off future in uncommonly personal terms.
“You think about the end of your career, and what have you done? I’d rather be working on something that was at least attempting to leave the planet behind better than when I started,” she says. “And, you know, I certainly want that for my daughter.”
