Now, the company has made a presentation at the Vertical Flight Society's H2 Aero workshop to confirm that it's also bringing its hydrogen expertise into the aviation world.

Hyundai/Kia and Toyota, of course, have been the two main hydrogen fuel cell stalwarts in the automotive industry. Batteries make more sense for most passenger car applications globally, but Japan and Korea are committed to building a "hydrogen economy" powering much more than personal transport, so these companies in particular have persisted with building and selling relatively small numbers of fuel cell-electric cars like the Nexo and Mirai.

That means they've got full hydrogen powertrains designed, manufactured in the tens of thousands of units, and fully crash tested to meet automotive safety certification standards in multiple countries – an excellent head start, you might say, if you're interested in rolling that expertise out into the aviation market. And that's definitely an avenue Hyundai is looking to work through Supernal.

"We're here to stay, and we want to be a prominent player in the aviation market," Supernal Senior Manager Yesh Premkumar told attendees at the H2 Aero workshop in Long Beach last week. "I don't think when you talk about aviation, the first name that comes to mind is Hyundai. So one of the primary focuses for us to be here today is to allow you all to understand that we are looking to partner in all the areas that we are good at. There are lots of things about aviation that we need to learn and understand, and a lot of folks in this room have that understanding. There are capabilities that we bring that we'd like to lend to the knowledge that exists here. So we want to foster that in bilateral partnerships as much as possible – all of it, from the aircraft, to the ecosystem, to the infrastructure, to operation, all the way down to city planning."