David Mayman, the founder of JetPack Aviation, says he fell in love with flight because with three uncles and a cousin employed as pilots, it’s in his blood
The Speeder is an aerial utility vehicle. To some extent it pivots away from the concept of a flying motorcycle, because when people think of motorcycles they think of recreation. The primary use case is really emergency response and disaster relief rather than recreational.
Imagine you’ve had a hurricane. Roads are damaged, you can’t get trucks on the road. You can swarm ten of these for less than you can fly one helicopter. They can fly pretty much in any weather — even if it’s rainy and you can’t see the horizon. In our aircraft it really doesn’t matter. You could have a 40-50 mph wind and our craft will still be rock solid.
I think recreational use will be during Phase 2 or Phase 3.
It’s typically designed to be flying 0-1000 feet above ground level. In the Himalayas you can fly at 20,000 feet but only be 100 feet above ground. It could be autonomously operated, perhaps shipping medical supplies where it has to fly at that altitude. A pilot would need O2.
It’ll take any heavy fuel. Kerosene. What’s called Jet A fuel. Diesel. We’ve negotiated a deal with Prometheus fuels. They’re extracting fuel from CO2 in the air. They can produce gasoline, diesel, et cetera. When they come online we’ll be flying net carbon zero.
We got about 50 pre-orders in a couple of hours and we shut it down. We’re not seeking letters of intent until we can demonstrate the aircraft. My feeling is the first thing anybody should say is “let me see it fly. Bring me to your test field.”
Prototype – We’ve actually got two. We started with P1 and flight-tested that a year and a half ago. We’re working now on P2, a third full scale prototype. That’s the one that will look way more like the air utility vehicle we intend to take to market.
