Posted on 04/21/2023 7:05:08 AM PDT by Red Badger
REGENT has revealed the full-scale mockup of its seaglider, an all-electric passenger vehicle with a range of 180 miles. (Photo: REGENT)
The company REGENT, which is developing a new kind of electric maritime vehicle called a seaglider, revealed the full-scale mock-up of its seaglider prototype today. REGENT also announced plans to expand its global headquarters for new manufacturing and test facilities. The expansion has the potential to enable fulfillment of $8 billion in commercial orders by 2025 at the headquarters in Rhode Island.
Last September, the company announced that its quarter-scale seaglider technology demonstrator completed its first flight. According to REGENT, its seaglider is the first vehicle to take off from a controlled hydrofoil to wingborne flight.
Billy Thalheimer, cofounder and CEO of REGENT, shared additional information about the company's progress in an interview with Avionics this week.
Avionics: What considerations related to safety and regulation are taken into account in the development of the seaglider?
Billy Thalheimer: Our first vehicle is projected to operate under Coast Guard jurisdiction, and we have been working closely with the agency to establish regulations for our vessels including design approval, inspection, construction and crewing. Our design basis agreement with the Coast Guard is in process, and we maintain a close line of communication with both the Coast Guard (Office of Engineering Standards) and FAA (Emerging Concepts & Innovation group).
The full-scale seaglider is designed with multiple redundancies in its all-electric distributed power system and automated flight software and sensor systems to provide operators with full situational awareness for navigation, object detection, and flight conditions.
REGENT co-founders Billy Thalheimer and Mike Klinker, pictured above, unveil the full-scale model of the all-electric seaglider. (Photo: REGENT)
Avionics: How has the $50 million in funding been used to advance the development of the prototype?
Thalheimer: These investments have significantly accelerated technological advancements of our human-carrying prototype—including building and flying the first ¼-scale seaglider prototype to prove out the float-foil-fly mission. We have also tested sensor systems in real environments on helicopters to validate flight operations. The cumulative learnings from more than a year of flight testing was used to inform the design of the full-scale seaglider.
As a result, we are on track to deliver our product to market by the mid-decade. These resources have proved instrumental in enabling us to tailor our vehicles to meet the diverse needs of our customers, including commercial transport, supply chain and logistics, and military defense applications.
How would you describe the current state of the industry and how REGENT’s seagliders fit into the competitive landscape?
40% of the world’s population live in coastal communities, and are in dire need of a fundamentally new method of transportation to efficiently move people and cargo through coastal routes. Through our seagliders, we aim to revolutionize sustainable, maritime transportation in these regions by offering a fast, efficient, and emission-free solution.
We see seagliders as a complementary addition, rather than a replacement, to traditional modes of maritime and airline transportation, which can be seamlessly integrated into our customers’ existing fleets. Our studies, based on publicly validated data, show that our seagliders serve an $11 billion market that we project to swell to as much as $25 billion as battery technology advances.
With the electrification of ferries, aircraft, rail, and other modes of transportation, we envision our all-electric seagliders as an integral part of the future of sustainable, multi-modal mobility.
REGENT's technical demonstrator, a 1/4-scale seaglider prototype (Photo: REGENT)
Could you describe how you envision the commercialization and deployment of the seagliders?
We envision our vehicles to act as a bridge between coastal city centers, facilitating multi-modal transportation through coastal airports. We have established a loyal customer base of major airlines and ferry operators such as FRS in Germany, Ocean Flyer in New Zealand, and Southern Airways/Mokulele Airlines—who we plan to deliver our first commercial passenger seagliders to, once they hit the market. Our vehicles will comprise the best features of both maritime and aviation transport, combining the speed and comfort of an airplane with the cost efficiency of a boat. This will enable us to service coastal communities such as New York City, the Hawaiian Islands, and Pacific island nations.
What capabilities will the new facilities/expansion in Rhode Island provide?
Our new facility expansion will support initial low-rate production and at-rate production to fulfill our $8B commercial backlog.
180 mile range. It’s just ridiculous
It is very poorly written.
You suggest that they are saying the market potential is $8B in 2025, but that is not their current order book. That makes sense.
But there is another way to read it: “The expansion has the potential to enable fulfillment of $8 billion in commercial orders by 2025 at the headquarters in Rhode Island.” I interpret that to say that the plant expansion will have enough capacity to fill their $8 billion order book by 2025.
Your interpretation is probably correct. There is no way they can have that many orders.
Regardless, I cannot believe anybody would invest in a factory that could produce $8 billion of product in a few years without a strong, non-cancelable order book.
I worked in enough startups to know how this game is played.
OMG that thing is ugly. My first thought was it resembles a Soviet helicopter. Then I looked it up, hah hah, it was Soviet.
My recollection of aviation is back in the 30’s and 40’s they had some very successful amphibious airliners and military planes, and they looked pretty good.
The Ekranoplan “ended badly” because the USSR collapsed. The vehicle worked as designed.
You might ask the Electric Boat Company "what could go wrong?". Or you could as Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company. Or Ingalls shipbuilding company. There's plenty of actual experience to answer your question.
Meh. Reminds me of many of Hitler’s military gigantism projects, like the Maus and the Gustav siege gun at Sevastopol.
The whole idea is ridiculous. As a conventional aircraft uses its fuel it gets lighter, a good thing. This thing is just a brick that can fly briefly after a 2 day charge. The money that is being wasted on this fairy tale is tragic
As a result, we are on track to deliver our product to market by the mid-decade.
I wonder how many ‘D’ cells it takes to run the darn thing.
Just one...................
Looks like a scaled down version of the Caspian Sea Monster. This will likely fail too.
Oh, its pretty.
I rode a hydrofoil ferry Denmark to Sweden, once, it’s probably similar...............
“... they used “sustainable” three or four times in the short article ...”
‘Sustainable’ has become a trigger word for me. As soon as I read that word in an article I know the content is leftist claptrap. I stop reading and move on.
‘Sustainable’ = Bull-shiite
All-electric distributed power system in action.
Who knew that Electric Boat puts their electric motors on the outside of submarines in contact with the salt water...
Thanks, I needed that! :^)
Weight to power ratio of lithium ion batteries to gasoline - 800 percent
Yeah ... you got me.
Except that you don't.
Ever heard of an Azipod? The electric motor is IN THE POD. Outside the hull of the ship. Underwater.
I'm not a big fan of electric vehicles.
I'm also not a big fan of BS or of "snark".
Azipod is inside a watertight container, or "pod."
The electric WIG vessel shown here has its motors out in the open so that they can be AIR COOLED, making them susceptible to salt water spray. Which was the point of the original poster.
So your "Electric Boat Company" comment was the snark.
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