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PowerFlask All-Solid-State Micro Fuel Cell Released: Lifting Drone Endurance from 40 Minutes to 5 Hours

UltraCell and Boeing have jointly developed the PowerFlask micro solid-oxide fuel cell. Using butane as fuel, the system delivered 5.2 hours of flight time on drones in field tests — 7.8 times the lithium-battery equivalent. Amazon Prime Air and Zipline are the launch customers.

PowerFlask All-Solid-State Micro Fuel Cell Released: Lifting Drone Endurance from 40 Minutes to 5 Hours

PowerFlask, a micro solid-oxide fuel cell system jointly developed by US fuel-cell maker UltraCell and Boeing, has been officially released. The system uses butane as fuel and converts it directly into electricity through a solid-oxide electrolyte, with no conventional combustion process.

Field tests on Amazon Prime Air delivery drones showed that the same airframe equipped with PowerFlask flew for 5.2 hours, up from 40 minutes on lithium batteries — a 7.8x gain. The drone's service radius expanded from 12 kilometers to 78 kilometers, and average daily deliveries per airframe jumped from 22 to 140.

Launch customers include Amazon Prime Air, Zipline, and UPS Flight Forward. UltraCell said small-batch deliveries will begin in Q3 2026 at $8,900 per system. With a hydrogen-fuel version on the roadmap, the company expects PowerFlask annual shipments to exceed 100,000 units in 2027.