
#327: Mark Groden of Skyryse
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Challenges and Opportunities in the eVTOL Industry
This chapter delves into the eVTOL industry's hurdles and progress, particularly emphasizing safety and automation. It highlights priorities for eVTOL companies, including platform certification and the operational realities faced in air taxi services.
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Speaker 1
Well,
Speaker 2
I didn't wash out. I was just really busy. I was very busy and I took a few lessons and I got busy. And then I began investigating, is there some system that can automate away my lack of time for training? Go on, Grodin. So
Speaker 1
that's incredibly common and it's very rational, right? How many weekend activities can you engage in where if you make one mistake, you could kill yourself and your entire family?
Speaker 2
Yeah, Kirsten. Huh? Yeah.
Speaker 3
Yeah. It's on my list, but when I'm ready to commit, I'll commit to it. I'm wondering if any of the eVTOL companies out there have reached out to you. Because to Alex's point earlier, I mean, not all of them, by the way, are going for like automated flight features, right? Some of them are going to be. to be this idea of electric air taxis. So flying over densely populated areas, high rates of use, you would think that you would want to increase safety as much as possible. So are you talking to eVTOL companies and do they understand what the benefit would be with Skyrise or are they kind of blowing you off on that front?
Speaker 1
No, they're definitely, definitely engaged and becoming increasingly engaged as, as they get closer to commercializing. You know, you have to realize these eVTOLs are facing a very different set of problems. The vision may be similar to what we're talking about 10 years out, but the way that they're trying to get there is by building CleanSheet, a completely new flying contraption with a whole new set of energy storage and way to fly through the air. So they've got their work cut out for them, just in certifying a new platform that can fly and carry a payload. And so that, if you talk to them, that's their focus. They, of course, understand the value propositions that we bring with our technology. And as they're getting closer to certification commercialization, obviously, they want to increase the safety and ease of use and make it optionally piloted, all of which we can deliver. operated an air taxi service. And to date, it is the highest volume in the world. We did in Los Angeles before COVID. And we had Skyrise app on people's phones. And we had cars driving people to helicopters and hot loading them and flying them across town and driving them to their final destination. And we did that to make sure we understood what that market could be and ensure that SkyOS was supporting it. And I mentioned clouds before, we figured out there were 25% of days that we could not dispatch. We could not fly our service. And think about it. If your value proposition is to save people time and you're about to cancel on them, there's no good time to cancel. Minutes before or the night before, either way, you're blowing up the calendar and defeating the unit economics at the same time. So you need the ability to fly all weather, which the VTOLs will initially not be certified to do you also need a bigger pilot supply than we quickly found is supporting vertical flight in this country and then obviously if you want a road map to optionally piloted we believe we're the fastest path to get there so they'll absolutely need this uh technology to be successful and fully realize their vision. But right now they're laser focused on certifying.
Speaker 2
All right.
Aircraft design may be a mature space, but Mark Groden sees the entire control scheme for aircraft as an opportunity for transformative change, from the cockpit to the electronic architecture to actuators. He joins the gang to explain Skyryse's work on this opportunity, and where it's taking aviation.