September 18, 2023 • 33 mins
Jonathan sits down with Sudhin Shahani of Surf Air Mobility, who recently went public to talk about the future of travel. What is Regional Air Mobility? Why is Surf Air Mobility electrifying planes? And how might this affect how you handle short-range travel in the future?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey therein
Welcome to Tech Stuff. My name is Jonathan Strickland. I
am your host, and how the tech are you. I
have a very special episode today. It is rare that
I get to do interviews, and it's more rare than
(00:25):
I get to talk to C suite individuals in my interviews.
But today I get to do that because I have
Sudan Shahani from surf Air on my show. Welcome to
Tech Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Thank you, Jonathan. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I'm so excited to talk to you because I remember
hearing about surf Air almost a decade ago now while
I was just following up on tech and back in
those days, the business plan and the approach and the
company mission statement was a little bit different than what
you are pursuing now. So I hope we can kind
of talk about sort of the history of the company
(01:02):
while the original vision was and how that has evolved
over time, because I'm really excited about where you're headed.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Absolutely. So the short version of this is, you know,
the early days of Surfair, the business model, it started
to serve business travelers and it started to serve business
travelers with a subscription all you can fly type product
for really the frequent flyer that was going on routes
like La de San Francisco and Santa Barbara de San
Francisco and wanted to go from a small airport to
(01:33):
smaller airport and get call it, two hours of their.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Life back on a day trip.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
So don't spend a lot of time in the big airport,
get there five minutes before, get on a small plane,
hang with other members of like a like minded travelers club.
And people were doing it three or four times a month,
and we were giving consumers back time.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
It was a great experience.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
It was one of the few times I think people
actually enjoyed their their their flying experience, or we kind
of tried to bring that back, if you will, and
along the way we kind of realized that, you know,
while that was great to serve a particular audience that
was paying a small premium to kind of domestic business
class to get an experience that felt more like a
(02:13):
private flying experience, that was still a pretty limited I mean,
we could do that on roots like La San Francisco
and a number of other kind of high traffic you know,
commercial hubs, on each end, business city pairs with all
these business travelers. But we realized that if actually there's
five thousand airports in the country, and if we could
create something that took away the barriers, like if we
could make a similar experience affordable to a much broader audience,
(02:37):
that would be great. That would be the big the
big idea, like how can we make this affordable and
how can we make it greener? Because we look at
the two barriers to entry that people had, they were
either like, that's still a little bit expensive for me,
I don't fly enough to justify it, or like do
I really want to seem like I'm flying on a
private plane? Like that doesn't really go well with my
carbon footprint. And the reality is we're now entering an
(02:58):
error where we're moving towards the world is moving towards
green aviation is that's sort of the way we look
at it, and regional travel, at least over the next
decade or two, we think is about to be reimagined
because all of the innovation in this space is coming
around small planes flying short routes and that's where our.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Specialty is, that's what we do.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
And if we could very simply, if you can make
smaller planes electric, a lot more people can afford him.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Yeah, and you've covered a lot of ground, which is
only fair for a company that flies everywhere. But I
want to dive into a couple of those things. One
of them is, you know, we're starting to hear about
this concept of regional air mobility, this ability to travel
to relatively short distances, far enough where driving would still
(03:48):
take several hours, but short enough so that smaller aircraft
can make that in a single leg as opposed to
multiple hops. And this approach to trying to make that
more accessible and also reduce carbon footprint makes a ton
of sense to me. It also comes in line with
some other business plans we've been hearing from with other
startups that are looking at even shorter distances right Like,
(04:12):
we're looking at companies that are starting up in the
space where they're using kind of the quad copter sort
of approach to take passengers from a centralized location to
the airport. To me, like, this is the next step
out from that. We're not talking about coast to coast travel,
but if I here in Atlanta, if I need to
get to Western Tennessee, well taking booking a big commercial
(04:37):
aircraft seat for that can seem like it's a bit overkill,
but it's still too far to make it a convenient
drive to get out there in a day, do some
business come back, or even just on a short weekend
trip if it's like a recreational thing. So I get
where the appeal is and I'm really excited to learn
more about this. At what point in the phase of
(04:58):
surf air where you start to look at this as
being the next step of kind of migrating toward this
approach of how can we enable regional mobility when we
have all these different airports that are underused or sometimes
they're just going dormant for a while because they're just
they're catering to like local pilots, and that's it. When
(05:19):
did you start really kind of ideating on this.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yeah, it's a good question. And actually, and you covered
a lot of ground there too. I think that in
our case, unlike a lot of other people in the
space in the aviation of the airline space, in the
early days of surf air, we were one of the
few companies that was actually building a brand and a
consumer service around flying smaller airplanes. The industry at a
(05:43):
whole when they think about when they thought about the
new technology happening. So a couple of different trends are
coming together here. To your point, regional air mobility is
now something a lot of people are talking about. You'll
see NASA reports and McKinsey reports and kind of it's
sort of becoming a thing that that's where a lot
of the innovation in aviation is going to be for
the next decade or two. And it's sort of It
(06:04):
also is slightly in contrast to a line is being
drawn between urban air mobility and regional air mobility. So
when you talk about the quad copters and ev toll
and things like that going really short distances, that's really
that's being classified or will you know as urban air
mobility call it zero to fifty miles, and then you
look at regional air mobility fifty to five hundred miles.
(06:24):
The benefits of regional air mobility and why people believe
that will develop first would say is that we have,
particularly in this country, all of the infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
To another point you.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Made, there are actually five thousand airports that exist in
this country that can be used by charter operators in
real contrast, major commercial airlines, we're morphed over the last
couple of decades really more into a hub and spoke
model with larger planes and less deserving, less places, and
less point to point. You know, eighty percent of airline
traffic goes through thirty airports, and they may flex up
(06:55):
to two or three hundred for the other twenty percent.
We were already flying from airport. It's like that, Like
I'm sitting here talking to you today from our headquarters
at Hawthorne in California. Hawthorne Airport is a smaller, smaller airport.
You know, California alone is three hundred airports. There's probably
twelve airports within an hour drive of here. And because
we were already flying smaller aircraft and flying from airports
(07:15):
like that, when different companies were coming up with solutions
and electrification, new technology, new vehicles, we would really get
to see a lot of that first. We were fortunate
to see a lot of that as it was happening.
So to directly answer a question, when we start thinking
about this, we've been following the trend of kind of
where the space is going. Given that we are in
(07:35):
fact today we are the largest commuter airline in the US,
and the commuter air category is really the category that
would be defined as the business model that would enable
regional airmobility. It's flying small planes frequently like an airline.
So we're the biggest brand in that space, and hence
we saw a lot of things first. Whereas large airlines
(07:57):
would really look at small electric airplanes as a sign
project on their way to big ones, it wasn't a
real commercial use case there. So we were kind of
in a really unique position to be able to We
think we're in a unique position to be able to
lead the charge here well.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
And with that established infrastructure there, it sets it apart
from other potential solutions that would require massive investment in
building out infrastructure. I'm thinking of things like all the
various sort of blue sky rail initiatives that have been
pushed around, and I love the concept of rail initiatives,
(08:31):
but if you're being realistic and you're thinking about the
amount of time and money that's going to be required
for that to happen, and you are really realistic and
you start talking about the political buy in that has
to happen for that to work, and then we recognize
that every few years we change our political leaders, and
so consistency is difficult. Having that infrastructure there is so valuable.
(08:54):
I think it's impossible to overstate how valuable it is
that these airports already exist. So that problem has been solved.
Now it's the question of can you have the capacity
to meet demand, can you find the price point that
works for the customer, and can you have that be
a business plan that ultimately results in profitability.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
I think that's exactly right. I mean, look, we say
that to really build out the regional ammability landscape, and
you need a couple of like there's a couple of
key things you need for success. You actually need a
brand and a platform that consumers trust and that operators
are able to fly for. So what we're trying to
do here we don't just want to continue to build
(09:37):
a huge single airline in the space. We actually have
a platform and a brand today where we have a
number of third party operators that fly for us. We
want to deploy electric airplanes across all of them, not
just for ourselves, and the first wave of electrification which
will significantly reduce costs as well. We're actually electrifying an
(09:57):
airplane called the Cessna caravan. We're working with Cessna the
manufacturer and to do so, but we're going to own
the ip around it. But it's a we're built. We're
creating both a fully electric and a hybrid electric powertrain
for the Cessna Caravan. And what's really important about the
hybrid particularly is to the point you were making about
(10:18):
all the existing infrastructure, the hybrid Sessna Caravan will work.
Think like the early days of the Prius. The combustion
motor charge is the battery, so you actually don't need
charging stations to be set up at all of these airports.
You don't need any infrastructure upgrades across all of these
airports to be able to use it. So we live
in a country today where all of these airports exist.
A number of airplanes exist which can be converted over
(10:40):
to more efficient and modern powertrains hybrid electric, fully electric,
et cetera. Based on the mission, hybrid electric can actually
save twenty five percent of the operating cost, which makes
it which is a huge number in aviation world, and
fully electric can save up to fifty percent of the cost,
but will initially be focused on much on shorter routes
one hundred miles and less.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
We're going to take a quick break and then we'll
be back to talk more about surf air mobility. I
really wanted to talk to you, Sodent about the electrification process,
because that's to me one of the really exciting things
(11:21):
about this. I mean, one, opening up accessibility to more
people so that they're able to take advantage of this
kind of travel. I'm really excited about that as well,
especially in lieu of methods of getting from place to
place when you're talking in that like fifty to five
hundred mile range. But can you kind of talk me
(11:44):
through this electrification process? Are you both looking into retrofitting
existing aircraft with new electric powertrain systems or hybrid powertrain systems.
Are you also looking at maybe partnering with companies that
would be building purpose built electric planes. What's your approach?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, it's a good question, and actually it's funny here
here at our business, I try to have everyone use
the word upgrading.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Rather than retrofitting.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Okay, no, taken.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
So we think the first thing that you can do
to make the biggest impact is actually take an existing
airframe where there is wide distribution of it already, and
upgrade that to being a hybrid or fully electric powertrain.
If you think about just the life cycle of an airplane,
people keep airplanes or airplanes stay in service twenty five
thirty years. However, there's a moment, depending on the utilization
(12:39):
of the operator, call it every three to five years,
where they have to do a full overhaul of the
combustion engine, and that's a moment where they could replace
it with an electric engine, which is a way to
get faster adoption across a much larger category. So we're
starting with the first thing we're doing is in electric
and a hybrid powertrain for the Cessna Caravan. Cessna Caravan
(12:59):
is a great airplane. It's been around for a long time.
There's over three thousand of them out there. We are
actually the largest passenger operator, we believe, of the Caravan
in the US, and these powertrains will be both marketed
to existing owners that existing fleet out there, where when
it comes time for an engine overhaul, the goal is
(13:19):
to have them be able to upgrade to a hybrid
or an electric powertrain for a similar prices it would
cost them to overhaul a combustion engine and instantly start
seeing the cost and the emissions benefits Additionally, Cessna will
be selling new versions of the airplane basically with an
electric version and a hybrid version for new buyers. And
(13:39):
there's a pretty broad range of potential customers for the caravan.
It's passenger operators like us, it's cargo, it's military, etc.
There's a number of use cases. So that's the first
the electrification project we're doing. Will we do intend in
the future to work with other airplane types with kind
of our proprietary technology, of course, and we also intend
to work with there's a lot of amazing and ambitious
(14:01):
projects for people who are building clean sheet design airframes,
lighter airframes so on, that are purpose built for electric engines,
and a lot of them are building their own electric
engines in those cases, and we intend to work with
companies like that too to plug into our platform. As
I mentioned, you know, we have a brand in a
platform which we have our own fleet, and we've got
a number of other operators that fly within the platform,
(14:23):
and we would like to provide people with the best
aircraft for the best use case. So if there's a
great new clean sheet design aircraft that comes to market,
we'd like to be the one to help distribute that
and commercialize it too. Wow, so we will in the
long run have a range of products.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
It makes me think of some of the sort of
the big displays we saw where you had things like
the solar powered plane that made the journey around the world,
and you realize, all right, well, this is not to
show some sort of practical use for an aircraft. This
is not an aircraft that's going to take you, you know,
from one city to another. But what it does start
to show is potential for various technologies to be incorporated
(14:59):
in real world applications. And it's exciting to talk to
someone at a company where you're actually kind of doing that,
where you're using this upgrade approach. And I love creating
that incentive as well, the upgrade incentive where you know,
for a similar price you can swap out the powertrain
for your aircraft and you know that you're going to
(15:21):
be incurring lower costs down the line. One of the
things that I think is really interesting is in the
auto manufacturing space. We've heard time and again from manufacturers
that changing from internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles
ends up simplifying things a great deal, both on the
manufacturing and fabrication side and in the maintenance side, because
(15:46):
the systems themselves are inherently less complex than your traditional
fuel powered engines are. So is the same thing true
with aircraft.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah, absolutely so. Think about you know, electric motors are
much simpler. What we're doing is designing and assembling electric powertrains,
which are a combination of motors, battery packs, a layer
of control software you wrap around them. In the case
of the hybrid, you're also adding a smaller, more efficient
combustion motor that helps charge the battery. And given that
(16:18):
there's also a real software layer that wraps around this
and then integrates into the aircraft, the aid the hardware
is all cheaper to maintain than the existing combustion engine,
and b the ability to continuously evolve and upgrade the powertrain,
similar to what you've seen with electric cars or other
kind of systems, where where an operator that takes an
electrified powertrain from US will have they'll have that one
(16:40):
time fee to install it. There'll be an ongoing relationship
with them, which is not just about basic maintenance. It's
also about constant aircraft health monitoring, predictive maintenance upgrading, kind
of as batteries get to next generations and evolve like
the product will continue to evolve, So you may see
an electric aircraft with a fully electric aircraft with an
initial initial range of one hundred miles that at and
get upgraded to go two hundred miles at some point
(17:01):
in the future.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Yeah, it blows my mind too, because I'm from I'm
old enough where the idea of something like the equivalent
of a firmware upgrade to a vehicle is a completely
foreign concept to me, because I think back to my
childhood and the computerized systems and vehicles were very primitive
and very limited. You're talking about bunch of micro controllers
(17:24):
that don't even really talk to each other. And now
we're in a world where we have a lot more
interconnected systems, where because we have that capability, it opens
up opportunities that we can't even necessarily conceptualize right now.
Right it may be that three years down the line
we realize, oh, we can leverage this because we've built
(17:45):
it into the vehicle to deliver some new features that
end up being huge improvement of quality of life or
much more effective for the maintenance and care of aircraft
or the operation of those aircraft. To me, that's another
really exciting thing about this approach, And of course that
doesn't necessarily just limit itself to electrified vehicles, but it's
(18:09):
kind of in line with that too, where we're talking
about this you know, integrated package where it's not just
the drive train, it's the entire system, the control system,
and everything that's wrapped around of the software that enables
everything as well. And I had read up on an
interesting thing about electric planes, because if you've ever ridden
(18:30):
an electric vehicle, you know that they operate at a
much quieter noise level than an internal combustion engine vehicle.
The interesting thing with electric planes is that they do
operate more quietly than your typical fuel driven aircraft. But propellers,
you know, turboprops make noise, and if you're in an
(18:51):
aircraft that's being powered by a fueled engine, chances are
the engine noises are actually drowning out anything from the propellers.
You're not hearing them unless you're maybe sitting up there
with a pilot. But in electric planes there's less to
mask that. So I'm curious, what are you looking into
as far as ways to mitigate propeller noise? In order
(19:13):
to make sure you're not impacting the passenger experience too much.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
So in the world of building aircraft, there's the airframe
manufacturer and there's the powertrain, which, unlike ours, those were
actually separated a long time ago, which is why our
business model is survivable to be in the powertrain space.
I would say the airframe manufacturers are actually doing a
lot of interesting things like adding blades to propellers, curve propellers,
things like that to mitigate noise. I'm not sure if
(19:41):
the propeller noise gets louder, if the engine noise gets softer,
I get the relative comparison. I'm not sure there's been
enough electric planes flown around to kind of prove that out,
so reserve judgment on that. But certainly there are enhancements
being made on with propellers to make them quieter, and
certainly the goal of electrified aircraft. We're not suggesting that
(20:02):
electrified aircraft will be silent, but certainly the goals are
to reduce noise levels because to your point, you know,
there's all of these airports that can be accessed, and
reducing noise levels to be able to get in and
out of ones in more crowded residential areas would be
an extremely helpful.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Thing, right, right, Because we're also hearing onlike the crazy
ultra lux side of aircraft, all these companies that are
struggling or trying to become hypersonic aircraft companies, and they're
trying to suggest, oh, well, we're designing aircraft that's going
to minimize or even eliminate sonic booms. I'm not a physicist,
(20:37):
but I have a real hard time believing that based
upon how air works. But I hear about that, and
I'm like, oh, yeah, finding ways to minimize noise so
that you are not a nuisance to the community. I mean,
especially if we're looking at utilizing these various airports, these
regional airports at a higher rate, then it stands to
(20:57):
reason that you, if you want to do good business,
you have to take that into consideration as well.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
And everything about our model we talk about wanting to
sustainably connect the world's communities. Like the idea is how
we create value in a community. We would like to
create more jobs in that community. We'd like to have
people who live there be able to move around quicker, faster, cheaper,
ideally quieter. Yeah, as well, and not sit in traffic
for four hours.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it opens up opportunities that otherwise
just are very difficult to realize because just because the
physical realities of getting around in the world and that,
you know, we have to come to the conclusion that
there are certain things that are just more effective to
do in person. Podcasts arguably are one of them. But yeah,
(21:44):
and having those opportunities to do that without having to
dedicate half a day of travel to get there or
to navigate through a busy airport, especially if you're talking
about the ability to get to a regional airport that
might be closer to your final destination as opposed to
fly into a major city and then having to drive
another three hours to get to wherever you're headed. I
(22:05):
can really see the value proposition there. We're going to
take another quick break, but we'll be right back to
talk a little bit more about surf air mobility. So
what are we looking at as far as timelines go?
(22:26):
How are you you know, what's what's your your plan? Like?
Where are you looking at at where people might realistically
expect to start seeing surf air service start popping up
in places beyond you know, obviously been operating in California
for years, but beyond there.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Yeah, so you know, as part of so we recently
acquired a company called Southern Areas as well. And you know,
we have operations in Hawaii, we have operations in California.
We actually operate in various routes around the country where
we fly through under a program called the Essential Air
Service Program, flying to communities that don't have much air service.
And we have recently built out an on demand short
(23:08):
regional kind of charter platform, more more efficient fly tover
prop versus a jet or flying you know, and that's
a national platform too, so you do have surfair in
some form across a lot of the country. We are
going to continue to scale that with combustion airplanes, always
focusing on the most fuel efficient airplanes and so on
(23:28):
as part of our mission of green aviation until we
start to deploy electrified airplanes, which we intend to do
starting the beginning of twenty twenty six. So we're going
through a certification process now of you know, we've already
had a demonstration of the technology and we're now going
through a certification process.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Excellent, Yeah, and has anything surprised you along this journey,
things that you've learned that perhaps were counterintuitive, or something
that really delights you as you were working towards this goal.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
I mean, I mean, how long have you got like
a surprise every day? Look, I think one of the
things that's been that it's been great as we think
about the path and the product line we're bringing out,
you know, we're very focused on I think I mentioned
to you that the hybrid electric is actually what we
think is being designed for kind of mass adoption here
within the caravan community, because the idea of the hybrid
(24:21):
electric is it's not going to it's going to not
need infrastructure on the ground, it's not going to have
really any range limitations as opposed to the fully electric
and so on. We are, however, going to launch the
fully electric first, and that's that's a different order than.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
We'd originally thought about.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
You know, when we were telling people building a hybrid plane,
they often say okay, great, and then like, when will
it be fully electric? Like that's the natural kind of
question that we get next. But the reality is we're
building an electric powertrain which has a hybrid variant, which
will be the more popular variant in the long run.
But it's but we are going to start with a
fully electric which I think we're really excited about. We
(24:56):
want to be I think our goal would be to
be the first to commercially eployee fully electric flight. And
we have a perfect use case for it in our
network in Hawaii where we have we fly a number
of short hops that fully electric flight could be.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
That could be a launch showcase for example.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Yeah, I've had the luxury of visiting Hawaii a few
times and have taken some of those island hopper flights.
I could easily see that as being the perfect use
case to showcase the technology and it's a applicability. And
your comments on hybrid approach makes so much sense because
it didn't even occur to me that, of course, if
(25:33):
you were to go fully electric, then yes, we have
all these thousands of airports that are under used, perhaps
across the entire United States, but they don't necessarily have
the facility to be able to recharge a plane. It's
just like we are looking at the electric vehicle challenges
across the United States where yeah, you've got to build
that electric charging infrastructure or else people could potentially end
(25:57):
up running out of juice in the middle of nowhere.
That's one of those things that's a huge worry point
for a lot of consumers, right they don't want to
adopt electric because they worry about this, And until you
have the infrastructure, you can't really drive adoption of electric.
But then then you also have the flip side of
that problem. If you don't drive adoption of electric, then
there's very little incentive to build out the infrastructure, and
(26:19):
it becomes a chicken and egg problem. So I definitely
agree with you that I think the hybrid approach is
the one that ultimately makes the most sense and will
be the most popular because there will be some airports
where they just won't have the capacity to be able
to meet that electric charging demand, at least not in
the short term, perhaps in the mid or long term.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Absolutely no, we think hybrid will be a valuable product
and a valuable product globally for a long time to come. Yeah,
look at the use cases of caravans. There, there's cargo passenger,
there's a lot of international use cases. There's a number
of Sessa caravans in Africa and Asia. There's a lot
of places where the caravan. We think the hybrid will
be really valuable where which won't need any infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Up right, and it's still following in that same path
as we're seeing with countries around the world pushing toward
electrification for land vehicles, and you're ahead of the game
on that when you're pushing for it for aircraft as well.
And to me, like that's a huge value proposition when
you're coming into talk to various countries or states or
(27:23):
regions and you're talking about the value of going with
a hybrid approach, when you're talking about things like climate,
you're talking about the local economy, all of those things
start to line up and it's I think we're looking
at a convergence of perfect timing and perfect environment to
(27:44):
have this kind of an approach to the business. So
I totally am jazzed by the mission statement for surf
Air in the direction you're pursuing.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Yeah, I selfishly, I'm really looking forward to twenty twenty
six when I can start looking at booking a flight
on one of these so I can experience it. I
mean in the luxury where I could do that just
to try it out, but also like the idea of
being able to do something to make these short hop
flights where otherwise I might not even consider traveling to
(28:16):
the place, even though there might be clear benefits to
traveling there. If I might need to record something with
someone who's maybe three hundred miles away, and that's too
far for me to worry about driving or for them
to worry about driving. But if I had an option
like this, then that suddenly becomes a viable possibility. And
you know, even in just my own personal case, it
(28:37):
makes sense.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
And I think that's one of the core things that
they consider what we're doing. Like again, unlike the shift
to ev on the ground, the shift to electric in
the air, it really like it matters to customers in
a very different way as well. Of course, everyone wants.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
To be more more green.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Really, that's the big point here is are actually creating
a whole new market and a whole new audience, a
whole new level of accessibility where because of the amount
you one can reduce cost, people who could never afford
to fly in small.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Planes will one day be able to.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah, and that's the real consumer proposition here of regional
air mobility and so on.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
It's like it's saying, you're.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Guysurely going to take people a lot of people up
from the ground into the air because it can now
be affordable for them to do so, Like they will
be able to get places cheaper and faster, more efficiently.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
That's fantastic and it's so exciting to talk about, like
the combination of regional air mobility, which is already a
burgeoning kind of business area, and then the electrification on
the other side, you're putting them both together. It's really innovative.
And I was so excited when I was told that
I'd have the opportunity to speak with you about this
because again, like when I had first heard of surf air,
(29:45):
it was when you know, tech journalists were kind of
referencing it as like almost like ride hailing but for
small aircraft over in Silicon Valley, which wasn't even really
accurate back then, but that's kind of the narrative that developed.
But we're looking at something totally innovative and disruptive in
(30:06):
the best of ways, when you're looking at giving more
people that chance to take advantage of that mobility while
also doing so in a way that's environmentally responsible and
also making more use of this infrastructure that exists. And
it only has value if you use it. I think
of it kind of like Metcalf's law with networks, right,
(30:29):
the network is only useful. It's only valuable if you
have connections to it. Well, to me, like we're looking
at these this network of airports across the United States
and beyond, they would suddenly grow in usefulness as well
when they start getting more utility, more people flying in
and out of them. Then you start thinking about the
(30:51):
impact on local economies. It becomes this cascading ripple effect
that just gets really exciting.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yeah, it's an amazing time to be in aviation. Actually,
I think the next couple of days, kids are going
to see a real next shift, like people call it
the Third Revolution and aviation, where you had like the turboprop,
then you had the jet engine, and now you're going
to have like the small electric airplane.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeah, it's fascinating to look at sort of the circular
nature of that and how the things we learn from
one era can then be applied to the next one
along with innovations in other areas. I can't wait to
see where surf air goes from here. I'm really excited
to see how your journey continues, and very excited to
(31:30):
book that flight in twenty twenty six. I'm just going
to put that on my calendar and check back in
to see if that's a possibility, because I got places to.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Go so well. Like I said, there's a number of
flights you can even book.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Put small planes and combustion engines in the way there.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
I definitely want to do that. I have never done that.
I've never flown on a small aircraft, and I've always
thought that that would be really interesting. So I'll have
to look into that anyway, because i really feel like
I need to experience it myself to get a full
idea of what that's like. I've watched videos from past
years when we were looking more at surf Air as
(32:07):
sort of the catering to executive travel, and looking at
those videos, I thought, Wow, what an incredible team y'all
have over there in your company, and the experience was
such a cultivated one. Clearly, that's a very different thing
than what we're talking about with regional air mobility, but
it had me excited just from seeing that because it's
(32:30):
so far flung from the experience I think most people
have when it comes to air travel. Right now, where
they're talking about getting on a big plane and your
seats are crammed as close as possible to fit as
many passengers as possible, and you feel like you have
no personal space, and it's just a very different experience.
(32:51):
And yeah, I definitely would like to have the alternative
to that.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Well, we look forward to having you on board.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Well, thank you so much for joining the show. I
really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Thank you, Jonathan. That was fantastic. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey therein
Welcome to Tech Stuff. My name is Jonathan Strickland. I
am your host, and how the tech are you. I
have a very special episode today. It is rare that
I get to do interviews, and it's more rare than
(00:25):
I get to talk to C suite individuals in my interviews.
But today I get to do that because I have
Sudan Shahani from surf Air on my show. Welcome to
Tech Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Thank you, Jonathan. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I'm so excited to talk to you because I remember
hearing about surf Air almost a decade ago now while
I was just following up on tech and back in
those days, the business plan and the approach and the
company mission statement was a little bit different than what
you are pursuing now. So I hope we can kind
of talk about sort of the history of the company
(01:02):
while the original vision was and how that has evolved
over time, because I'm really excited about where you're headed.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Absolutely. So the short version of this is, you know,
the early days of Surfair, the business model, it started
to serve business travelers and it started to serve business
travelers with a subscription all you can fly type product
for really the frequent flyer that was going on routes
like La de San Francisco and Santa Barbara de San
Francisco and wanted to go from a small airport to
(01:33):
smaller airport and get call it, two hours of their.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Life back on a day trip.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
So don't spend a lot of time in the big airport,
get there five minutes before, get on a small plane,
hang with other members of like a like minded travelers club.
And people were doing it three or four times a month,
and we were giving consumers back time.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
It was a great experience.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
It was one of the few times I think people
actually enjoyed their their their flying experience, or we kind
of tried to bring that back, if you will, and
along the way we kind of realized that, you know,
while that was great to serve a particular audience that
was paying a small premium to kind of domestic business
class to get an experience that felt more like a
(02:13):
private flying experience, that was still a pretty limited I mean,
we could do that on roots like La San Francisco
and a number of other kind of high traffic you know,
commercial hubs, on each end, business city pairs with all
these business travelers. But we realized that if actually there's
five thousand airports in the country, and if we could
create something that took away the barriers, like if we
could make a similar experience affordable to a much broader audience,
(02:37):
that would be great. That would be the big the
big idea, like how can we make this affordable and
how can we make it greener? Because we look at
the two barriers to entry that people had, they were
either like, that's still a little bit expensive for me,
I don't fly enough to justify it, or like do
I really want to seem like I'm flying on a
private plane? Like that doesn't really go well with my
carbon footprint. And the reality is we're now entering an
(02:58):
error where we're moving towards the world is moving towards
green aviation is that's sort of the way we look
at it, and regional travel, at least over the next
decade or two, we think is about to be reimagined
because all of the innovation in this space is coming
around small planes flying short routes and that's where our.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Specialty is, that's what we do.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
And if we could very simply, if you can make
smaller planes electric, a lot more people can afford him.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Yeah, and you've covered a lot of ground, which is
only fair for a company that flies everywhere. But I
want to dive into a couple of those things. One
of them is, you know, we're starting to hear about
this concept of regional air mobility, this ability to travel
to relatively short distances, far enough where driving would still
(03:48):
take several hours, but short enough so that smaller aircraft
can make that in a single leg as opposed to
multiple hops. And this approach to trying to make that
more accessible and also reduce carbon footprint makes a ton
of sense to me. It also comes in line with
some other business plans we've been hearing from with other
startups that are looking at even shorter distances right Like,
(04:12):
we're looking at companies that are starting up in the
space where they're using kind of the quad copter sort
of approach to take passengers from a centralized location to
the airport. To me, like, this is the next step
out from that. We're not talking about coast to coast travel,
but if I here in Atlanta, if I need to
get to Western Tennessee, well taking booking a big commercial
(04:37):
aircraft seat for that can seem like it's a bit overkill,
but it's still too far to make it a convenient
drive to get out there in a day, do some
business come back, or even just on a short weekend
trip if it's like a recreational thing. So I get
where the appeal is and I'm really excited to learn
more about this. At what point in the phase of
(04:58):
surf air where you start to look at this as
being the next step of kind of migrating toward this
approach of how can we enable regional mobility when we
have all these different airports that are underused or sometimes
they're just going dormant for a while because they're just
they're catering to like local pilots, and that's it. When
(05:19):
did you start really kind of ideating on this.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yeah, it's a good question. And actually, and you covered
a lot of ground there too. I think that in
our case, unlike a lot of other people in the
space in the aviation of the airline space, in the
early days of surf air, we were one of the
few companies that was actually building a brand and a
consumer service around flying smaller airplanes. The industry at a
(05:43):
whole when they think about when they thought about the
new technology happening. So a couple of different trends are
coming together here. To your point, regional air mobility is
now something a lot of people are talking about. You'll
see NASA reports and McKinsey reports and kind of it's
sort of becoming a thing that that's where a lot
of the innovation in aviation is going to be for
the next decade or two. And it's sort of It
(06:04):
also is slightly in contrast to a line is being
drawn between urban air mobility and regional air mobility. So
when you talk about the quad copters and ev toll
and things like that going really short distances, that's really
that's being classified or will you know as urban air
mobility call it zero to fifty miles, and then you
look at regional air mobility fifty to five hundred miles.
(06:24):
The benefits of regional air mobility and why people believe
that will develop first would say is that we have,
particularly in this country, all of the infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
To another point you.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Made, there are actually five thousand airports that exist in
this country that can be used by charter operators in
real contrast, major commercial airlines, we're morphed over the last
couple of decades really more into a hub and spoke
model with larger planes and less deserving, less places, and
less point to point. You know, eighty percent of airline
traffic goes through thirty airports, and they may flex up
(06:55):
to two or three hundred for the other twenty percent.
We were already flying from airport. It's like that, Like
I'm sitting here talking to you today from our headquarters
at Hawthorne in California. Hawthorne Airport is a smaller, smaller airport.
You know, California alone is three hundred airports. There's probably
twelve airports within an hour drive of here. And because
we were already flying smaller aircraft and flying from airports
(07:15):
like that, when different companies were coming up with solutions
and electrification, new technology, new vehicles, we would really get
to see a lot of that first. We were fortunate
to see a lot of that as it was happening.
So to directly answer a question, when we start thinking
about this, we've been following the trend of kind of
where the space is going. Given that we are in
(07:35):
fact today we are the largest commuter airline in the US,
and the commuter air category is really the category that
would be defined as the business model that would enable
regional airmobility. It's flying small planes frequently like an airline.
So we're the biggest brand in that space, and hence
we saw a lot of things first. Whereas large airlines
(07:57):
would really look at small electric airplanes as a sign
project on their way to big ones, it wasn't a
real commercial use case there. So we were kind of
in a really unique position to be able to We
think we're in a unique position to be able to
lead the charge here well.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
And with that established infrastructure there, it sets it apart
from other potential solutions that would require massive investment in
building out infrastructure. I'm thinking of things like all the
various sort of blue sky rail initiatives that have been
pushed around, and I love the concept of rail initiatives,
(08:31):
but if you're being realistic and you're thinking about the
amount of time and money that's going to be required
for that to happen, and you are really realistic and
you start talking about the political buy in that has
to happen for that to work, and then we recognize
that every few years we change our political leaders, and
so consistency is difficult. Having that infrastructure there is so valuable.
(08:54):
I think it's impossible to overstate how valuable it is
that these airports already exist. So that problem has been solved.
Now it's the question of can you have the capacity
to meet demand, can you find the price point that
works for the customer, and can you have that be
a business plan that ultimately results in profitability.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
I think that's exactly right. I mean, look, we say
that to really build out the regional ammability landscape, and
you need a couple of like there's a couple of
key things you need for success. You actually need a
brand and a platform that consumers trust and that operators
are able to fly for. So what we're trying to
do here we don't just want to continue to build
(09:37):
a huge single airline in the space. We actually have
a platform and a brand today where we have a
number of third party operators that fly for us. We
want to deploy electric airplanes across all of them, not
just for ourselves, and the first wave of electrification which
will significantly reduce costs as well. We're actually electrifying an
(09:57):
airplane called the Cessna caravan. We're working with Cessna the
manufacturer and to do so, but we're going to own
the ip around it. But it's a we're built. We're
creating both a fully electric and a hybrid electric powertrain
for the Cessna Caravan. And what's really important about the
hybrid particularly is to the point you were making about
(10:18):
all the existing infrastructure, the hybrid Sessna Caravan will work.
Think like the early days of the Prius. The combustion
motor charge is the battery, so you actually don't need
charging stations to be set up at all of these airports.
You don't need any infrastructure upgrades across all of these
airports to be able to use it. So we live
in a country today where all of these airports exist.
A number of airplanes exist which can be converted over
(10:40):
to more efficient and modern powertrains hybrid electric, fully electric,
et cetera. Based on the mission, hybrid electric can actually
save twenty five percent of the operating cost, which makes
it which is a huge number in aviation world, and
fully electric can save up to fifty percent of the cost,
but will initially be focused on much on shorter routes
one hundred miles and less.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
We're going to take a quick break and then we'll
be back to talk more about surf air mobility. I
really wanted to talk to you, Sodent about the electrification process,
because that's to me one of the really exciting things
(11:21):
about this. I mean, one, opening up accessibility to more
people so that they're able to take advantage of this
kind of travel. I'm really excited about that as well,
especially in lieu of methods of getting from place to
place when you're talking in that like fifty to five
hundred mile range. But can you kind of talk me
(11:44):
through this electrification process? Are you both looking into retrofitting
existing aircraft with new electric powertrain systems or hybrid powertrain systems.
Are you also looking at maybe partnering with companies that
would be building purpose built electric planes. What's your approach?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, it's a good question, and actually it's funny here
here at our business, I try to have everyone use
the word upgrading.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Rather than retrofitting.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Okay, no, taken.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
So we think the first thing that you can do
to make the biggest impact is actually take an existing
airframe where there is wide distribution of it already, and
upgrade that to being a hybrid or fully electric powertrain.
If you think about just the life cycle of an airplane,
people keep airplanes or airplanes stay in service twenty five
thirty years. However, there's a moment, depending on the utilization
(12:39):
of the operator, call it every three to five years,
where they have to do a full overhaul of the
combustion engine, and that's a moment where they could replace
it with an electric engine, which is a way to
get faster adoption across a much larger category. So we're
starting with the first thing we're doing is in electric
and a hybrid powertrain for the Cessna Caravan. Cessna Caravan
(12:59):
is a great airplane. It's been around for a long time.
There's over three thousand of them out there. We are
actually the largest passenger operator, we believe, of the Caravan
in the US, and these powertrains will be both marketed
to existing owners that existing fleet out there, where when
it comes time for an engine overhaul, the goal is
(13:19):
to have them be able to upgrade to a hybrid
or an electric powertrain for a similar prices it would
cost them to overhaul a combustion engine and instantly start
seeing the cost and the emissions benefits Additionally, Cessna will
be selling new versions of the airplane basically with an
electric version and a hybrid version for new buyers. And
(13:39):
there's a pretty broad range of potential customers for the caravan.
It's passenger operators like us, it's cargo, it's military, etc.
There's a number of use cases. So that's the first
the electrification project we're doing. Will we do intend in
the future to work with other airplane types with kind
of our proprietary technology, of course, and we also intend
to work with there's a lot of amazing and ambitious
(14:01):
projects for people who are building clean sheet design airframes,
lighter airframes so on, that are purpose built for electric engines,
and a lot of them are building their own electric
engines in those cases, and we intend to work with
companies like that too to plug into our platform. As
I mentioned, you know, we have a brand in a
platform which we have our own fleet, and we've got
a number of other operators that fly within the platform,
(14:23):
and we would like to provide people with the best
aircraft for the best use case. So if there's a
great new clean sheet design aircraft that comes to market,
we'd like to be the one to help distribute that
and commercialize it too. Wow, so we will in the
long run have a range of products.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
It makes me think of some of the sort of
the big displays we saw where you had things like
the solar powered plane that made the journey around the world,
and you realize, all right, well, this is not to
show some sort of practical use for an aircraft. This
is not an aircraft that's going to take you, you know,
from one city to another. But what it does start
to show is potential for various technologies to be incorporated
(14:59):
in real world applications. And it's exciting to talk to
someone at a company where you're actually kind of doing that,
where you're using this upgrade approach. And I love creating
that incentive as well, the upgrade incentive where you know,
for a similar price you can swap out the powertrain
for your aircraft and you know that you're going to
(15:21):
be incurring lower costs down the line. One of the
things that I think is really interesting is in the
auto manufacturing space. We've heard time and again from manufacturers
that changing from internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles
ends up simplifying things a great deal, both on the
manufacturing and fabrication side and in the maintenance side, because
(15:46):
the systems themselves are inherently less complex than your traditional
fuel powered engines are. So is the same thing true
with aircraft.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah, absolutely so. Think about you know, electric motors are
much simpler. What we're doing is designing and assembling electric powertrains,
which are a combination of motors, battery packs, a layer
of control software you wrap around them. In the case
of the hybrid, you're also adding a smaller, more efficient
combustion motor that helps charge the battery. And given that
(16:18):
there's also a real software layer that wraps around this
and then integrates into the aircraft, the aid the hardware
is all cheaper to maintain than the existing combustion engine,
and b the ability to continuously evolve and upgrade the powertrain,
similar to what you've seen with electric cars or other
kind of systems, where where an operator that takes an
electrified powertrain from US will have they'll have that one
(16:40):
time fee to install it. There'll be an ongoing relationship
with them, which is not just about basic maintenance. It's
also about constant aircraft health monitoring, predictive maintenance upgrading, kind
of as batteries get to next generations and evolve like
the product will continue to evolve, So you may see
an electric aircraft with a fully electric aircraft with an
initial initial range of one hundred miles that at and
get upgraded to go two hundred miles at some point
(17:01):
in the future.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Yeah, it blows my mind too, because I'm from I'm
old enough where the idea of something like the equivalent
of a firmware upgrade to a vehicle is a completely
foreign concept to me, because I think back to my
childhood and the computerized systems and vehicles were very primitive
and very limited. You're talking about bunch of micro controllers
(17:24):
that don't even really talk to each other. And now
we're in a world where we have a lot more
interconnected systems, where because we have that capability, it opens
up opportunities that we can't even necessarily conceptualize right now.
Right it may be that three years down the line
we realize, oh, we can leverage this because we've built
(17:45):
it into the vehicle to deliver some new features that
end up being huge improvement of quality of life or
much more effective for the maintenance and care of aircraft
or the operation of those aircraft. To me, that's another
really exciting thing about this approach, And of course that
doesn't necessarily just limit itself to electrified vehicles, but it's
(18:09):
kind of in line with that too, where we're talking
about this you know, integrated package where it's not just
the drive train, it's the entire system, the control system,
and everything that's wrapped around of the software that enables
everything as well. And I had read up on an
interesting thing about electric planes, because if you've ever ridden
(18:30):
an electric vehicle, you know that they operate at a
much quieter noise level than an internal combustion engine vehicle.
The interesting thing with electric planes is that they do
operate more quietly than your typical fuel driven aircraft. But propellers,
you know, turboprops make noise, and if you're in an
(18:51):
aircraft that's being powered by a fueled engine, chances are
the engine noises are actually drowning out anything from the propellers.
You're not hearing them unless you're maybe sitting up there
with a pilot. But in electric planes there's less to
mask that. So I'm curious, what are you looking into
as far as ways to mitigate propeller noise? In order
(19:13):
to make sure you're not impacting the passenger experience too much.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
So in the world of building aircraft, there's the airframe
manufacturer and there's the powertrain, which, unlike ours, those were
actually separated a long time ago, which is why our
business model is survivable to be in the powertrain space.
I would say the airframe manufacturers are actually doing a
lot of interesting things like adding blades to propellers, curve propellers,
things like that to mitigate noise. I'm not sure if
(19:41):
the propeller noise gets louder, if the engine noise gets softer,
I get the relative comparison. I'm not sure there's been
enough electric planes flown around to kind of prove that out,
so reserve judgment on that. But certainly there are enhancements
being made on with propellers to make them quieter, and
certainly the goal of electrified aircraft. We're not suggesting that
(20:02):
electrified aircraft will be silent, but certainly the goals are
to reduce noise levels because to your point, you know,
there's all of these airports that can be accessed, and
reducing noise levels to be able to get in and
out of ones in more crowded residential areas would be
an extremely helpful.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Thing, right, right, Because we're also hearing onlike the crazy
ultra lux side of aircraft, all these companies that are
struggling or trying to become hypersonic aircraft companies, and they're
trying to suggest, oh, well, we're designing aircraft that's going
to minimize or even eliminate sonic booms. I'm not a physicist,
(20:37):
but I have a real hard time believing that based
upon how air works. But I hear about that, and
I'm like, oh, yeah, finding ways to minimize noise so
that you are not a nuisance to the community. I mean,
especially if we're looking at utilizing these various airports, these
regional airports at a higher rate, then it stands to
(20:57):
reason that you, if you want to do good business,
you have to take that into consideration as well.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
And everything about our model we talk about wanting to
sustainably connect the world's communities. Like the idea is how
we create value in a community. We would like to
create more jobs in that community. We'd like to have
people who live there be able to move around quicker, faster, cheaper,
ideally quieter. Yeah, as well, and not sit in traffic
for four hours.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it opens up opportunities that otherwise
just are very difficult to realize because just because the
physical realities of getting around in the world and that,
you know, we have to come to the conclusion that
there are certain things that are just more effective to
do in person. Podcasts arguably are one of them. But yeah,
(21:44):
and having those opportunities to do that without having to
dedicate half a day of travel to get there or
to navigate through a busy airport, especially if you're talking
about the ability to get to a regional airport that
might be closer to your final destination as opposed to
fly into a major city and then having to drive
another three hours to get to wherever you're headed. I
(22:05):
can really see the value proposition there. We're going to
take another quick break, but we'll be right back to
talk a little bit more about surf air mobility. So
what are we looking at as far as timelines go?
(22:26):
How are you you know, what's what's your your plan? Like?
Where are you looking at at where people might realistically
expect to start seeing surf air service start popping up
in places beyond you know, obviously been operating in California
for years, but beyond there.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Yeah, so you know, as part of so we recently
acquired a company called Southern Areas as well. And you know,
we have operations in Hawaii, we have operations in California.
We actually operate in various routes around the country where
we fly through under a program called the Essential Air
Service Program, flying to communities that don't have much air service.
And we have recently built out an on demand short
(23:08):
regional kind of charter platform, more more efficient fly tover
prop versus a jet or flying you know, and that's
a national platform too, so you do have surfair in
some form across a lot of the country. We are
going to continue to scale that with combustion airplanes, always
focusing on the most fuel efficient airplanes and so on
(23:28):
as part of our mission of green aviation until we
start to deploy electrified airplanes, which we intend to do
starting the beginning of twenty twenty six. So we're going
through a certification process now of you know, we've already
had a demonstration of the technology and we're now going
through a certification process.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Excellent, Yeah, and has anything surprised you along this journey,
things that you've learned that perhaps were counterintuitive, or something
that really delights you as you were working towards this goal.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
I mean, I mean, how long have you got like
a surprise every day? Look, I think one of the
things that's been that it's been great as we think
about the path and the product line we're bringing out,
you know, we're very focused on I think I mentioned
to you that the hybrid electric is actually what we
think is being designed for kind of mass adoption here
within the caravan community, because the idea of the hybrid
(24:21):
electric is it's not going to it's going to not
need infrastructure on the ground, it's not going to have
really any range limitations as opposed to the fully electric
and so on. We are, however, going to launch the
fully electric first, and that's that's a different order than.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
We'd originally thought about.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
You know, when we were telling people building a hybrid plane,
they often say okay, great, and then like, when will
it be fully electric? Like that's the natural kind of
question that we get next. But the reality is we're
building an electric powertrain which has a hybrid variant, which
will be the more popular variant in the long run.
But it's but we are going to start with a
fully electric which I think we're really excited about. We
(24:56):
want to be I think our goal would be to
be the first to commercially eployee fully electric flight. And
we have a perfect use case for it in our
network in Hawaii where we have we fly a number
of short hops that fully electric flight could be.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
That could be a launch showcase for example.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Yeah, I've had the luxury of visiting Hawaii a few
times and have taken some of those island hopper flights.
I could easily see that as being the perfect use
case to showcase the technology and it's a applicability. And
your comments on hybrid approach makes so much sense because
it didn't even occur to me that, of course, if
(25:33):
you were to go fully electric, then yes, we have
all these thousands of airports that are under used, perhaps
across the entire United States, but they don't necessarily have
the facility to be able to recharge a plane. It's
just like we are looking at the electric vehicle challenges
across the United States where yeah, you've got to build
that electric charging infrastructure or else people could potentially end
(25:57):
up running out of juice in the middle of nowhere.
That's one of those things that's a huge worry point
for a lot of consumers, right they don't want to
adopt electric because they worry about this, And until you
have the infrastructure, you can't really drive adoption of electric.
But then then you also have the flip side of
that problem. If you don't drive adoption of electric, then
there's very little incentive to build out the infrastructure, and
(26:19):
it becomes a chicken and egg problem. So I definitely
agree with you that I think the hybrid approach is
the one that ultimately makes the most sense and will
be the most popular because there will be some airports
where they just won't have the capacity to be able
to meet that electric charging demand, at least not in
the short term, perhaps in the mid or long term.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Absolutely no, we think hybrid will be a valuable product
and a valuable product globally for a long time to come. Yeah,
look at the use cases of caravans. There, there's cargo passenger,
there's a lot of international use cases. There's a number
of Sessa caravans in Africa and Asia. There's a lot
of places where the caravan. We think the hybrid will
be really valuable where which won't need any infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Up right, and it's still following in that same path
as we're seeing with countries around the world pushing toward
electrification for land vehicles, and you're ahead of the game
on that when you're pushing for it for aircraft as well.
And to me, like that's a huge value proposition when
you're coming into talk to various countries or states or
(27:23):
regions and you're talking about the value of going with
a hybrid approach, when you're talking about things like climate,
you're talking about the local economy, all of those things
start to line up and it's I think we're looking
at a convergence of perfect timing and perfect environment to
(27:44):
have this kind of an approach to the business. So
I totally am jazzed by the mission statement for surf
Air in the direction you're pursuing.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Yeah, I selfishly, I'm really looking forward to twenty twenty
six when I can start looking at booking a flight
on one of these so I can experience it. I
mean in the luxury where I could do that just
to try it out, but also like the idea of
being able to do something to make these short hop
flights where otherwise I might not even consider traveling to
(28:16):
the place, even though there might be clear benefits to
traveling there. If I might need to record something with
someone who's maybe three hundred miles away, and that's too
far for me to worry about driving or for them
to worry about driving. But if I had an option
like this, then that suddenly becomes a viable possibility. And
you know, even in just my own personal case, it
(28:37):
makes sense.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
And I think that's one of the core things that
they consider what we're doing. Like again, unlike the shift
to ev on the ground, the shift to electric in
the air, it really like it matters to customers in
a very different way as well. Of course, everyone wants.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
To be more more green.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Really, that's the big point here is are actually creating
a whole new market and a whole new audience, a
whole new level of accessibility where because of the amount
you one can reduce cost, people who could never afford
to fly in small.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Planes will one day be able to.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah, and that's the real consumer proposition here of regional
air mobility and so on.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
It's like it's saying, you're.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Guysurely going to take people a lot of people up
from the ground into the air because it can now
be affordable for them to do so, Like they will
be able to get places cheaper and faster, more efficiently.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
That's fantastic and it's so exciting to talk about, like
the combination of regional air mobility, which is already a
burgeoning kind of business area, and then the electrification on
the other side, you're putting them both together. It's really innovative.
And I was so excited when I was told that
I'd have the opportunity to speak with you about this
because again, like when I had first heard of surf air,
(29:45):
it was when you know, tech journalists were kind of
referencing it as like almost like ride hailing but for
small aircraft over in Silicon Valley, which wasn't even really
accurate back then, but that's kind of the narrative that developed.
But we're looking at something totally innovative and disruptive in
(30:06):
the best of ways, when you're looking at giving more
people that chance to take advantage of that mobility while
also doing so in a way that's environmentally responsible and
also making more use of this infrastructure that exists. And
it only has value if you use it. I think
of it kind of like Metcalf's law with networks, right,
(30:29):
the network is only useful. It's only valuable if you
have connections to it. Well, to me, like we're looking
at these this network of airports across the United States
and beyond, they would suddenly grow in usefulness as well
when they start getting more utility, more people flying in
and out of them. Then you start thinking about the
(30:51):
impact on local economies. It becomes this cascading ripple effect
that just gets really exciting.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yeah, it's an amazing time to be in aviation. Actually,
I think the next couple of days, kids are going
to see a real next shift, like people call it
the Third Revolution and aviation, where you had like the turboprop,
then you had the jet engine, and now you're going
to have like the small electric airplane.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeah, it's fascinating to look at sort of the circular
nature of that and how the things we learn from
one era can then be applied to the next one
along with innovations in other areas. I can't wait to
see where surf air goes from here. I'm really excited
to see how your journey continues, and very excited to
(31:30):
book that flight in twenty twenty six. I'm just going
to put that on my calendar and check back in
to see if that's a possibility, because I got places to.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Go so well. Like I said, there's a number of
flights you can even book.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Put small planes and combustion engines in the way there.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
I definitely want to do that. I have never done that.
I've never flown on a small aircraft, and I've always
thought that that would be really interesting. So I'll have
to look into that anyway, because i really feel like
I need to experience it myself to get a full
idea of what that's like. I've watched videos from past
years when we were looking more at surf Air as
(32:07):
sort of the catering to executive travel, and looking at
those videos, I thought, Wow, what an incredible team y'all
have over there in your company, and the experience was
such a cultivated one. Clearly, that's a very different thing
than what we're talking about with regional air mobility, but
it had me excited just from seeing that because it's
(32:30):
so far flung from the experience I think most people
have when it comes to air travel. Right now, where
they're talking about getting on a big plane and your
seats are crammed as close as possible to fit as
many passengers as possible, and you feel like you have
no personal space, and it's just a very different experience.
(32:51):
And yeah, I definitely would like to have the alternative
to that.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Well, we look forward to having you on board.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Well, thank you so much for joining the show. I
really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Thank you, Jonathan. That was fantastic. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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