Hey guys - Billy Thalheimer, Co-founder and CEO of REGENT here. A friend reached out to say this is blowing up - so cool! (Thank you beefman lol) Here to answer any questions
The underside of the plane, and especially the part that 'drags' underwater - have you had any trouble with the sealife or other underwater objects? I would think bumping into large sea lion, shark, whale or even a large school of blue rockfishes might be unpleasant (to sealife, the plane, or both)?
Thanks for inviting questions. This is a very fun idea that basically turns the Spruce Goose’s single flight in ground effect into a scaled reality. Amazing.
With what is likely 1500+ pounds of battery, what is the operational charging/swapping strategy for carriers? Put another way, after one hour of operation (to exhaustion), how long is the vehicle expected to be idle?
We're using lithium-ion batteries (for now), so charging is like any electric car. As long as you have the power to fast charge it, you can do a full batter in ~45 mins.
That's max range (=180 miles) at 45 min charge. So let's say we're doing 90 mile missions between the islands of Hawaii, you only drain half the battery, so charge time is only ~20-25 mins - which is how long it takes passenger to unboard and board anyways!
Definitely considered. Swapping means specialized training, specialized equipment (these batteries are thousands of lbs), and mass storages of batteries to be on-hand at your docks. All drive the cost higher. So far our customers have not indicated that the charge times cause them problems, and the cost savings are significant in charge vs swap.
Plus, this way seagliders can potentially utilize the same charging infrastructure as electric aircraft, boats, and busses.
Additionally, swapping adds overhead mass to provide that sort of modularity and invites wear and tear on connectors and seals. All things we remove or reduce by integrating the system and utilizing onboard charging.
Swapping batteries probably isn’t a good idea but swapping planes might be. A lot of desirable routes like SF <-> LA become possible with two flights, if an operator sets up a halfway point with charging stations you could disembark one plane and embark the next. The plane they just flew in on starts charging and becomes the second leg plane for the next flight through there. With even just one plane sitting there you can support a trip every 45m-1h.
So far in our 1/4 scale experiments, the foils have shed kelp pretty well. Kelp is something the America's Cup boats and even hydrofoil ferries (like in Japan and Hong Kong) have dealt with and solved.
Hey Billy, very small nitpick on your site: The "Mission Sets" nav button is broken on the Viceroy page, and it looks like it's just down to the href missing the correct target (# instead of #mission-sets).
Tiny bug aside, I hope you find success in this venture. I'm sure there'll be a lot of naysayers, but I find it inspiring that someone is actually trying to do something in the sustainable air travel space with technology we have today rather than putting all of their eggs in the basket of yet to be seen technology.
I've often thought a smaller, faster form of transport like this would be lovely for summer day trips across to the Isle of Man. There's a currently a car ferry and scheduled flights from Liverpool airport but the faff involved in driving to Liverpool only to queue up for hours just for a 70 mile flight puts me off!
Very nice project, congrats! How does it perform on rough seas? How tolerant is it to the state of the surface? I expect you have big restrictions on the size of the swell.
Lots of examples! To pick a few:
- Manhattan to the Hamptons
- Los Angeles to San Diego or Santa Barbara
- Interisland in Hawaii, New Zealand, Japan, Caribbean, Pacific Northwest
- The global ferry market, huge in places like the Mediterranean, North Sea, Baltic Sea, English Channel, Southeast Asia. Actually, there are as many ferry passengers every year as there are airline passengers! ~4.5B on both... its a key mode of global travel
As battery tech evolves to enable ranges of up to 500 miles, we can add routes like Los Angeles <> San Francisco and Boston <> New York. I'm excited about those.
Keep in mind that in some cases ferry travel only makes sense because the ferry can also carry passenger vehicles/trucks with freight. But like an airplane this new vehicle is passenger only.
I was thinking this was impractical (the Cape is in the way) but Nantucket is pretty far East so it's not that bad to go around. ~115mi each way, so within range.
It's the norm in commercial aviation for prices to vary according to order size and timing, delivery slots and whether the buyer is an airline or a leasing company
(i.e. Boeing publishes a "sticker price" but its customers don't actually pay it)
In this case, you've got the added complication the aircraft is still a work in progress, and so what's actually negotiated is likely to depend heavily on timing of payments and cancellation clauses.
I am curious about whether the pricing ballpark is in the "new turboprop" or the "operating economics make it cost-effective to replace ancient piston operated aircraft in a relatively short timescale" range though. That could be a big deal for some low-use routes and in markets like Indonesia and the Philippines.
It's not even close to the same market. This thing seats 12. A cat ferry can seat more than a thousand people and a couple of hundred cars on top of that.
You probably want the comparison to a helicopter - because that's the same market: Can take off directly from the city, skips TSA security, seats 12.
