Electric Aircraft Start-Up Readies for Takeoff | iDSC012

SoCal Electric Aircraft Start-Up Readies for Takeoff Electric cars are one thing.  They’re growing.  Range is an issue.  Batteries are heavy and the technology has a way to go – but commercial electric aircraft?  Yep, it’s coming. Ampaire started by mostly SoCal natives in Temecula is now operating out of the LA Cleantech Incubator.  And they’re pretty far down the runway with their business and plans to fly airplanes using nothing but electric power.  We get all the details from Ampaire CEO, Kevin Noertker.  Well… all the details he’d share anyway – some of them are top secret, sort of. ***Transcript*** Recording date – December 20, 2017 Kevin Noertker: The reason we decided to locate the company here into LA is because it is the epicenter of new mobility. Consider us as the Tesla of aircraft. You can make a meaningful aircraft fly fully electric in the nine passenger range, and that's really what we're focused on. You're looking at regional air travel, short hops. We're in downtown LA, so let's say we wanted to fly over to Catalina, spend a good weekend over there, we'll be a test flying a full size aircraft next year. Tom Smith: Welcome iDriveSoCal, the podcast all about mobility in the automotive capital of the United States, Southern California. I'm Tom Smith. And joining me today is the co-founder of Ampaire, Kevin Noertker. He's co-founder and CEO. And what's significant about this particular podcast is that while I always tag it the automotive capital of the United States, we are talking mobility, but today we're talking about very exciting electric airplanes. And that is the Ampaire Company that Kevin cofounded and he and his team are developing an electric airplane right here in Southern California, specifically in Los Angeles, in the Los Angeles cleantech incubator. So Kevin thank you so much for joining me. Kevin Noertker: It's my pleasure. Thanks. Tom Smith: So in your words, what really is Ampaire? Kevin Noertker: So when we founded Ampaire on that question of what is the highest performance aircraft that's uniquely enabled by electric vehicle technology? So we are taking all of the great tech that was developed for automotive electric vehicles and we're applying it into aviation. So consider us as the Tesla of aircraft. Tom Smith: The Tesla of aircraft, the idea came from…? Kevin Noertker: My co-founder, Cory Combs. Tom Smith: Tell me a little bit about the team and how you guys came together. Kevin Noertker: Sure. Yes, so we are a cofounding team of three. So it's Cory, Ryan, and myself. Cory and I had worked together back at Northrop Grumman starting in 2009 where we're doing some advanced technology research and development. We were a real solid R&D team together there. Went our separate ways after a few years. I stayed at Northrop. Cory went to scratch his cleantech itch and did a startup internationally for a while. And then, in 2015, he'd been watching the automotive electric vehicle and aircraft technology space for a while looking to see where could they merge and when was technology really ready for the electrification of air travel. And so he reached out to me late 2015, convinced me to leave my comfortable job at a big company, and asked me to co-found this company with him, and we brought Ryan on as well and started in March of 2016. Since then we have a team of nine that we've built up. Brings experience for big companies like Northrop Grumman, GE and ABB, high tech startups like SpaceX and Faraday Future, and research institutions like Stanford, Caltech, and USC. Tom Smith: So you guys are all very…well, you're all engineers. Kevin Noertker: Most of the team is engineers, but we do have some business development. For example, our co-founder Ryan has a background in mathematics and economics...