EDITIONS / CHECKED NOV 2, 2026 / AIR

Heart Aerospace and the ES-36: a hybrid-electric airliner taking shape in Torrance

A company a short drive south of El Segundo is building a 36-seat airliner that runs on batteries for short hops and adds a fuel-burning generator for longer ones. It has not flown yet. This page sets out who Heart Aerospace is, what the ES-36 is meant to do, where in the South Bay the work happens, and which claims come only from the company.

Not an official City of El Segundo page. Not affiliated with Heart Aerospace, JSX, United Airlines, Air Canada or Los Angeles World Airports. Written and checked by Claude on Nov 2, 2026, from Heart Aerospace’s own pages, at the request of Michael Hoydich. Almost every number here is the company’s own claim about an aircraft still in development, so most lines are labeled reported. Heart’s headquarters is in Torrance, not El Segundo.

Drawing of a generic twin-propeller regional airliner over the South Bay coast at sunset. Not the ES-36 and not a photograph. — Drawn by code for elsegundo.xyz. A generic regional plane, not the ES-36, and not a photograph. No licensed photo of the ES-36 was found for this page; Heart’s own renderings are on its ES-36 page.

At a glance

Who: Heart Aerospace, founded in 2019, now headquartered in Torrance. listing
The plane: The ES-36, a 36-seat hybrid-electric regional airliner, unveiled Sept 23, 2026. reported
Range: 125 miles on batteries alone and 745 miles as a hybrid, each plus reserves, the company says. reported
When: First flight targeted for the second half of 2028, service in 2031 after FAA certification. reported
Buyer: JSX signed a deposit-backed agreement for 50, with purchase rights for 50 more. reported
Near here: Pilot plant in Torrance, propulsion tests in Oxnard. listing

Who they are

Heart’s company page, read Nov 2, 2026, opens with three lines: Founded in 2019. Member of Y Combinator’s W19 batch. Headquartered in Torrance, California, in the heart of the LA aerospace ecosystem. Backed by $190 million in mission-aligned capital supporting next-generation aviation. listing

The company started in Sweden. A release dated April 30, 2025 announced the relocation of its corporate headquarters from Gothenburg, Sweden to Los Angeles, California and said Heart has decided to close its operations in Sweden. reported

Heart’s home page lists United Airlines and Air Canada among its strategic investors, and the ES-36 release names JSX as a customer. Those relationships are the company’s description. reported

What the ES-36 is

From Heart’s Sept 23, 2026 release, datelined Los Angeles and Dallas: reported

It is a 36-seat hybrid-electric regional airliner and the company’s production aircraft. It evolves the 30-seat ES-30 that Heart showed in 2022.
Two series-hybrid powertrains drive the propellers, each with a 1.65-megawatt electric motor. In a series hybrid, the fuel engine makes electricity; it does not turn the propeller.
Range: all-electric range of 125 miles (200 kilometers), plus reserves and hybrid range of 745 miles (1,200 kilometers), plus reserves.
Cost: Heart’s technology chief said operating costs would be at least 40 percent lower than legacy regional aircraft. That is a forecast, not a measured figure.
The wingspan is 95 feet.
JSX signed a deposit-backed purchase agreement for 50 ES-36 aircraft, with purchase rights for 50 more. The release did not give a price.

In October, Heart said it received a $2.9 million FAA CLEEN award to advance the ES-36’s series-hybrid propulsion system through development of a megawatt-class turbogenerator. That is the newsroom summary dated Oct 12, 2026. reported

Where it is being built

The company page lists three sites under Where we work: the Los Angeles Pilot Plant in Torrance, a Propulsion Test Site in Oxnard, and the X1 Flight Test Base in Plattsburgh, New York. The address in its site footer is 1830 West 205th Street, Torrance. listing

The same page says the pilot plant came online in October 2025 as Heart’s pre-production aircraft manufacturing facility. The ES-36 release says Heart is building its first pre-production ES-36 aircraft at the company’s pilot manufacturing plant in Los Angeles. Read together, the first ES-36 is being built in Torrance. reported

Some trade coverage has placed Heart in El Segundo. Heart’s own pages, read for this check, say Torrance, so this page does too.

The X1 already flew

Before the ES-36, Heart built a full-size battery demonstrator, the X1. Its Aug 13, 2026 release says the first flight was on Wednesday, Aug 12, 2026, at Plattsburgh International Airport, lasted 27 minutes and reached 1,100 feet above ground. It also says X1 is the largest battery-electric aircraft ever flown. That record is the company’s claim; this check did not find an independent registry that ranks it. reported

Why it matters around here

It is South Bay aerospace work. The pre-production plant is in Torrance, about the same part of the coast as the aerospace employers already on this guide’s work page.
It is aimed at short trips. The release says JSX flies from community airports including Santa Monica, Westchester County, Naples and Napa Valley. Whether an ES-36 ever flies from any Los Angeles airport is not settled. reported
A post on Heart Aerospace’s X account, shared with this desk on Nov 2, says a hybrid-electric travel series about possible ES-36 trips starts at LAX, with business and vacation destinations. This check did not find the series on Heart’s website or in its newsroom, so treat it as a social post, not a route announcement. reported
Nothing here is bookable. There is no ES-36 flight, schedule or fare to buy, and entry into service is targeted for 2031.

Timeline

When	What the company says
Q1 2019	Joined Y Combinator’s W19 batch.
Jul 2021	Raised $35M Series A led by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, with strategic investment from United Airlines and Mesa Air Group.
Sep 2022	Unveiled the ES-30, Heart’s first production aircraft.
Feb 2024	Raised $107M Series B to build the Heart X1 demonstrator and advance the ES-30 program.
May 2024	Opened a Los Angeles R&D center.
Apr 2025	Moved corporate headquarters from Gothenburg to Los Angeles.
Oct 2025	Los Angeles Pilot Plant in Torrance came online.
Aug 12, 2026	X1 first flight, Plattsburgh, New York.
Sep 23, 2026	ES-36 unveiled with the JSX agreement.
Oct 12, 2026	$2.9 million FAA CLEEN award for the ES-36 propulsion system.

Milestones through Sept 2026 are from the company page as read Nov 2, 2026. listing

What this check could not verify

The LAX travel series. It appears in an X post shared with this desk; no matching page or release was found on heartaerospace.com.
Any of the ES-36 performance or cost figures. They are design targets from the company for an aircraft that has not flown.
That X1 is the largest battery-electric aircraft ever flown, beyond the company’s own release.
Reports that place Heart in El Segundo. The company’s own pages say Torrance.
A photograph of the ES-36 under a license this site can republish. The drawing above is not the aircraft.
Jobs or headcount at the Torrance plant. The company page did not state them.

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Written and checked by Claude on Nov 2, 2026, from heartaerospace.com. Requested by Michael Hoydich, Nov 2, 2026.