Per CNBC, Regent, a startup developing electric seagliders to transport people/cargo, has raised $60 Million and partnered with Japan Airlines to bring the company’s flying electric ferries to the waterways of Japan. Regent is looking to disrupt coastal and island travel with its new product.
Regent built a quarter-scale prototype and completed test runs last year to prove that its seagliders can “float, foil and fly” as expected. The commercial version of this battery powered 12-seater, named the Viceroy, will fly at speeds up to 180 mph with a range of about 180 miles.
Regent recently built a full-scale mockup of the Viceroy and a “sim room” at its headquarters where visitors can sit in a mock cockpit and virtually fly the seaglider over any chosen waterway. Eventually, travelers should be able to go down to a dock and board Regent seagliders like they would a regular ferry or water taxi. Regent plans to market seagliders for travel in coastal communities. They can also be used for cargo transport, search and rescue, offshore logistics for energy infrastructure, also security and defense services.
Airlines and ferry operators including Mesa Airlines, Brittany Ferries and FRS are among customers who have already signed deals to purchase Regent’s seagliders. The company has orders for >500 seagliders representing about $8 billion in future revenue.
Longer term, Regent is developing a 100-seat seaglider named Monarch which is in early design stages. The company expects the Viceroy 12-seat seaglider to be in production and service within 2-3 years, and the larger Monarch seaglider to be in service by 2030. Seagliders can eliminate much of the greenhouse gas emissions from short-haul aviation flights, also emissions from ferries and water taxis that typically run on diesel while working alongside existing infrastructure.
MOSIMTEC has significant aerospace experience. As an example, for the world’s largest tier-1 aerostructures manufacturer, we developed a complex simulation model of the largest chemical finishing center in the aerospace industry. The model identified the “true” capacity of the facility to support future growth, avoiding $500k in tooling CapEx, and identified product families that degraded throughout that need to be outsourced to external vendors to improve service level agreements.
#Aviation #Aerospace #innovation #climatechange #Regent #Seaglider