Wings of change

0:11Hello and welcome to The Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. This week's episode is all about clean mobility breakthroughs. First, we'll head to Dubai to explore a futuristic new vehicle, an electric sea glider that combines the best of boats and planes. This is a 7 ,000 kilogram vehicle. It has room for 12 passengers and two crew. It will be the largest electric flying machine in history. We're about to get this on the water and start it. And later, we'll catch up with a Swiss explorer and inventor, leading an ambitious mission to fly a hydrogen-powered airplane non-stop around the world.

0:54We have to show that human beings are able to be inventive, disruptive, better than what we have done in the past. And I think that's a really important message if we want to restore hope in a world where a lot of people believe that there is no future. This is The Entrepreneurs with me, Tom Edwards.

1:20you're listening to the entrepreneurs i'm delighted to say i'm joined now by monocle's editor-in-chief i'm going to add the one and only andrew tuck hello andrew hello tom thank you let me on your show finally it's nice i'm sure you've appeared on the entrepreneurs before now the reason you're here andrew recently you and i spent a week in dubai in the united arab emirates at the for For work, for work. For work, yes. At the World Governments Summit. And I can almost hear our audience saying, World Government Summit, ministers, policy wonks, why are you talking about this on The Entrepreneurs?

1:51But it was a pretty extraordinary event and there was incredible dynamism about it. And they'd convened, as often in that part of the world, a really interesting array and breadth of people. Was that the thing actually that struck you most about World Government Summit? Because I know you visited last year as well. It is an amazing meeting point, I guess, first of all, foremost yeah it's amazing meeting point and it's funny wherever you are in the world of course you get more people from the neighborhood and then it rings out from there so the strange thing when you're in in the middle east is you expect to see the same people as everywhere else but actually there's a lot of people from eastern europe there's a lot of people from around the gulf quite a lot of americans come but actually people from japan we met people from all over and it's a good meeting point these days the uae especially dubai because of the number of flights It's coming in the ease of getting in there.

2:37So that's amazing. And then, yeah, World Governments Summit. But it's also about governance. And actually, one of the things that entrepreneurs need is an environment, a set of legislation, a world where it's easy for them to set up their businesses and run with an idea very easily. And the UAE is determined to attract, especially people in the tech part of this or with new technology or with new ideas that seem destined for a brave new world. They want to pull those people in either to run their companies from there or to perhaps find finance there as well. There are a lot of entrepreneurs, both with successful ideas and others who I believe were speed dating at the end of the day.

3:18Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I think that's very much. We're going to hear from an aviation innovator. Obviously, then you could tell excited to be in the company of people who are open to genuine innovation, radical innovation even. And that was another theme, just briefly, before we hear from him, that underscored so many of the conversations. What's impressive, I guess, about UAE is the facility with which these things go from being a talking shop and a discussion, a forum, to action. You know, they have ministries for AI, they have ministries for possibilities. It's not just forward thinking, it's kind of forward doing.

3:53You really get that sense, don't you, when you're on the ground there? Yeah, we heard that they have this Minister of Possibilities, which is the idea, I think, of roughly 150 kind of normal retention points you'd have in your day-to-day life, whether that's getting a passport or a driving license. And they're focused on how do you just make that quick? How do you make that easy? But that certainly does include setting up a company, getting the office in your name, all those things. They just want to make it super, super simple. And you also realize that it's a really interesting country because there's a generation coming into government, into business there who are in their 30s, early 40s.

4:30And they're running now. They're kind of running much of the show. And they're internationally educated. They've been to the States for schooling. They've been to the UK for schooling. And they're just a bright, young, globally-minded generation who are cognizant of their traditions and their heritage. but they're embracing all that the world has to offer and they're not a big country you know there's only hundreds of thousands of people who are actual emiratis in dubai so they know that to be successful they really have to go for it and that's what i think everybody we met was like okay you know we're going as fast as we can to do all these things because we realize this is our moment to succeed well you describe the person we're going to hear from next andrew almost perfectly there.

5:14This is one of the people we were lucky enough to welcome in our pop-up studio in Dubai at WGS, Billy Tolheimer, the co-founder and CEO of Regent Craft. Regent Craft, a sea glider that flies just above the water to maximize efficiency. It's a very monocle story, innovation, smart thinking, clever solutions for the mobility challenges we face. Billy called in to see us and he began by telling me about what it is that the company does. So Regent builds sea gliders. Sea gliders are a new mode of transportation, halfway between a boat and a plane. So they are all electric flying boats. So you can imagine coastal routes from, say, as short as 100 kilometers up to 300, better with better batteries, dock to dock, overwater transportation at 300 kilometers an hour.

6:01So the thing that sort of separates a sea glider from the flying boats or even sea planes in the past is how we operate. So you board it at the dock like a boat. And then we use hydrofoils. So from the America's Cup or SailGP to get through the harbor. And then we take off from those hydrofoils onto our wing and we fly very low over the surface of the water, sort of like a bird does, a pelican as it flies over the surface. And because we fly on that dynamic air cushion, that's how we get very long range on batteries alone. So zero emission, very affordable, very convenient technology. And we're bringing it to market very soon.

6:36So exciting times and lots of developments, I'm sure, since Monocle last spoke to you. Tell us a bit about that. Is it the most exciting thing for you, Billy, the kind of proof points then of technology that you've invested in? Is it about partners? I know you've got some interesting names in the order book from all different kinds of sectors. I don't know. Has anything surprised you most actually in the last couple of years in terms of with whom you're collaborating or something that actually unlocked potential you maybe didn't even imagine? Tell me about the last couple of years. Yeah, well, looking back, I think it was April 22, the last time we were in Monocle.

7:05So it's actually a really apt comparison to sort of where we are today and a whole new dimension. So back then we had our quarter scale prototype. So when you're innovating new technology, you got to build it, put it in the real world and test it. So that was a roughly 200 kilogram test vehicle that basically had to prove sea gliders could work in the real world. So it did that floating, foiling, flying mission, showed all those different modes of operation. Now we're really on the precipice of doing the exact same thing. So in April, we were just months away from our first flight of that prototype.

7:38Now, standing here today, we're just a month or two away from the sea trials of our full-scale prototype. So this is a 7 ,000-kilogram vehicle. It has room for 12 passengers and two crew. It will be the largest electric flying machine in history. We're about to get this on the water and start it. And I'm so excited now because this really shows that this next age, this next era of sea glider mobility, of sustainable, affordable waterways mobility is really we're right on the doorstep. And it's so exciting because, as you say, it seems to tick off so many of those boxes, which are often hard to marry up.

8:16What's the big plan in terms of its broader application and rollout? one of the things I guess any kind of startup or scale up that excites people is what's the scalability situation, right, Billy? So what does that look like? And what kind of timeframes do you and your colleagues operate on? Yeah, well, you think about all existing modes of transportation, planes, cars, boats, and they're all multi-mission. And sea gliders are the exact same. That was really table stakes when we were developing the technology. So it was sort of founded with the passenger mission in mind. The company was founded in the Boston, Massachusetts area in the US.

8:51We're now in Rhode Island, but routes like Boston to New York City or LA to San Francisco or extending around the world going through routes in the Mediterranean here connecting Dubai, Abu Dhabi. These are the sort of coastal routes. It turns out that 40 % of the world lives in coastal communities anyways. And so we can connect them over water. We can feed in these new technologies that makes it fundamentally easier, more affordable, more comfortable, faster to move and really focus on that coastal community. So that's really where we are today. It's multi-mission. So it's not just about passengers.

9:26We have cargo customers. We have tourism customers. You think about the elegance of the flying boats of old and sort of the Catalina and the Clipper. And, you know, we have that aspect as well in our sea gliders. We also have defense and national security applications as we see sort of theaters increasingly move to coastal patrol, maritime patrol, island hopping, things like that. So that's sort of what helps region scale and what gives our investors that confidence that we can scale Seaglider technology as this multi-use, very large market, really globally accessible vehicle. Exciting times. Tell me a little bit about, as you build your team, and maybe this speaks a little bit to your own background and your co-founders, but do you find it's easier to recruit, I don't know, very, very specific technological expertise?

10:12Is it sometimes harder to find people who sort of get the vision, if you like, or actually is recruitment, you make it all sound so effortless, Billy. Is that a breeze like everything else? As you grow and scale, have the things that have been more difficult surprised you maybe on route? Recruiting is hard. And I think actually that's, that has been one of my learnings as a startup founder is how much of my time needs to be spent on recruiting and how critical recruiting is to the future of the company, because we are just the people building. And you spoke about the sort of passion or excitement, the fit, the cultural fit is massively important, we've found.

10:47And the startup grind is real, and everyone works really hard, and we're not constrained to normal working hours. And so we found that sort of the best indicator of success at a startup like ours is a passion for it. So on those long nights, on those weekends when you're really just grinding through the work, you're doing so because you love it and because you feel passionate about it and motivated about it. And it almost gives you a sense of purpose. And at our company, we have people with all sorts of passions. It doesn't need to be one passion. We have sailors who love the water. We have pilots and aviators.

11:22We have people who are passionate about sustainability and electrification. We have travel bugs who just want a better way to move around. We have people who have had family or friends affected by natural disasters and want a better way to service those and bring supplies and food. So we have all sorts of passions. We don't select for a passion. But really, what we found is, of course, the bar for talent needs to be top notch. And for intelligence and execution experience, that's a given. But you throw the passion in there. And that's really what bonds the company together and gets you onto your mission.

11:57Let me just ask you a little bit about the regulatory sort of frameworks here, because obviously any kind of transit solution, mobility fixes, particularly one that is pushing boundaries in terms of innovating, I gather it can be a thorny issue getting different regulatory approvals, particularly in different markets. Has that been as complex as my limited brain will allow me to imagine? Billy, give us a quick snapshot. Well, I think certification is sort of properly complex. Like it should have a degree of complexity because it needs to be a challenging road. We're building a product that people are going to trust their lives to when they step on it.

12:31I tell our company frequently, you know, you need to be ready to get on this. You need to be ready to put your family on this, right? This is the level of safety criticality. Before we put customers on it, everyone at the company needs to say, I would get on this thing first. And so, you know, safety is absolutely paramount. We get on the water here. Like it's just on the entire company's mind. let me ask you to cast your mind forward yeah billy any good founder worth their self to be able to do this what is the dream route let's say it's billy time is there with your selection your selection of colleagues family friends whatever you can choose imagine okay where are you and where do you yeah what is it land pull up i don't know how you describe some well i mean sort of dock somewhere we're here we're here in dubai i've been out here quite a bit and i've done the drive back and forth between Dubai and Abu Dhabi frequently.

13:23So since we're here and it's on my mind, I'll explain it now. So maybe you just flew into Dubai, but your end destination is Abu Dhabi. So you get out of the airport, hop in a bus or an EV, an autonomous car, whatever, an EV toll, a flying car at some point, takes you down to the port and sea gliders are waiting there. So it's super easy to just hop on board, just like you would a ferry. You don't need to go through aviation security. You don't need to take your shoes off. You just hop right on. Our first vehicle, the Viceroy Sea Glider is a 12-seat Sea Glider. So you also don't need to wait for other people to board.

13:57You think about boarding takes a half hour or more on an airplane, but you just hop right on. And the price point actually of this whole ride is going to be just slightly more than a taxi between the destinations. So we're talking, we're about to do this trip, which is basically takes the time of a chartered helicopter between Dubai and Abu and we're going to do it at the price of a car. So we board the sea glider. Sea glider has three modes, float, foil, fly. So we leave the dock, leave the marina on our hull that's floating. As soon as we leave the marina, we rise up on those hydrofoils. So those are basically underwater wings.

14:28They lift the sea glider out of the water on stilts. That gives us wave tolerance, maneuverability, safety, comfort on board. So that's when you can start drinking your drink. It's very easy. It's very important as we're in a busy harbor with other boats that we are a boat as well. So we're doing speed sort of as low as 15 knots, as high as about 45 or 50 knots, but it's very controllable and very maneuverable. So once we leave sort of the near harbor of Dubai, that's when we take off from those hydrofoils, settle in about 10 meters over the surface of the water. We accelerate up to about 300 kilometers an hour or 160 knots.

15:07So we get to Abu Dhabi in about a half hour. And as people who do this route know, that can be an hour, hour and a half, two hours, depending on traffic. So we get there in a half hour, costs about$45 for that ride, land, foil into Abu Dhabi Harbor, and then dock at the marina. So super easy trip, low cost, super fast. And the best part, as we think about the future and extensibility of this technology, zero carbon emissions the whole time. That was Billy Tolheimer, the co-founder and CEO of Regent Craft. You can find out more by heading over to regentcraft.com.

15:53You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Dr Bertrand Piccard is a Swiss explorer, psychiatrist and the founder of Solar Impulse Foundation, a project created to accelerate the implementation of clean tech solutions around the world. In this way, it carries a similar message to Solar Impulse, the craft in which he flew around the world in 2016. Dr Picard's also the chairman of Climate Impulse, a new environmental flagship in which he aims to fly around the world again, this time using hydrogen by 2028. Now, a year into the project, the aircraft has a completed cockpit and wings under construction.

16:29The airplane is progressively but decisively coming to life. I caught up with Bertrand to hear more about this ambitious goal, and he began by telling me what the journey has been like so far. Before 13th of February last year, the hydrogen airplane was in the heart and the spirit of Rafael Dinelli, my partner and myself. And it was a dream. And we waited until we had a real official main partner before announcing the project. And when ScienceCo, this Belgium composite and material for the future has signed, then we could announce it because it went from the dream to the reality. We were full power for one year.

17:16It was really an interesting year because we had to prepare all the molds to mold the cockpit, to mold the wings. And now I would say that maybe 30 % of the airplane is built already, which goes fast. Yeah, extraordinary. But I guess what also comes fast, right, is the 2028 deadline. And just on that, Sienzko, it's interesting looking at what Dr. Ilham Kadri, the CEO of that business, has had to say. And I think one thing that really jumped out at me was he said, one of the reasons why all their employees and colleagues are so excited and proud is because it's a human, an environmental, and a scientific adventure.

17:56And is that one of the things of which you're already most proud, Bertrand, the idea that this isn't just about pushing the boundaries of science. It's not just about acknowledging this environmental need, but it's human. There's an amazing story. It's those three tracks that make this project so particularly appealing and important to people, right? Yes, I'm happy you're aware of it. Exactly. It's a project that ticks all the boxes. Today, we have to show a lot of things. We have to show that human beings are able to be inventive, disruptive. We have to show that the technologies follow. We have a lot of technologies.

18:34These technologies can be solutions for the environmental crisis, for climate action, for a better quality of life. And altogether, what does it mean? It means that human beings are able to always do better, better than what we think, better than what we have done in the past. And I think that's a really important message if we want to restore hope in a world where a lot of people believe that there is no future. Well, to that point about hope, I guess one of the important ideas is always to try and demonstrate scalability of solutions, right? Because I guess a cynic might say, well, it's all well and good flying a couple of people around the world to make a point.

19:16But what we actually need to move the needle in terms of the climate crisis is scalable fixes. And it's important, isn't it, Bertrand, if we take a step back to underscore the point, OK, there is this symbolic importance of 2028, we hope, but actually it underscores a greater potential, which is presumably that if you can do this with two people, you know, smaller distances, different aviation challenges, you could find fixes that involve much larger numbers and do move the needle. This is not just about symbolism, is it? It's also about pointing at genuine potential for genuine fixes? You are absolutely right.

19:54Solar impulse, the solar powered airplane 10 years ago, was a symbol. Climate impulse, now with a hydrogen airplane, is really a message that the industry can take it over and scale it up. Because with the same wingspan than we have for climate impulse, 34 metres, like an Airbus 320, we fly two people around the world non-stop on one and a half tons of hydrogen. And if you put the same amount of hydrogen in the equivalent of an Airbus 320 with 150 people on board, you can fly a couple of hours. So you see that the order of magnitude is on our side. This time, it's not a symbol. It's a demonstration.

20:39If you want to take two steps back, we were at the same stage in the beginning of aviation in 1903. There were scientists who were saying that an airplane heavier than air could never fly. And then the same for computers. When IBM announced in the 60s, there is a market for four computers in the world. And then it was the same for mobile phones. The first mobile phone was a suitcase for$15 ,000. And now everybody has a cell phone in the pocket because there has been antennas installed everywhere. So the people who are sceptic should be careful. They should not say that something is impossible because afterward they might look completely stupid.

21:29Exactly. Now tell me about this last 12 months. Has anything surprised you on the upside or the downside, Bertrand? And I mean, you know, if we look at 3D modeling, you've made new maquettes, you have to keep evolving this. But once you get into, I don't know, actually looking at, you know, what are the interior fittings going to be like? Or if you're making the highly, you know, incredible weight bearing wing spa, for example, did that throw up attendant challenges? Were some things easier than you and your team were expecting? Were some things much more difficult? What is difficult is to have no benchmark.

22:03So we have to do everything from scratch. and invent everything. And this is why we have a very, very disruptive and innovative team. A lot of people who really bring their experience and all together it can make it happen. So I would say that in the last year, it went incredibly well, which is maybe a sign that we have to be really careful because we have now some tests to do. We have built a spar and this spar has to be tested to the rupture. If it breaks exactly at the right moment, it means that it was well calculated. If it breaks too early, it means it was badly calculated or badly built.

22:47And if it breaks too much after the calculated point, it means it's too heavy and too strong and too solid. And this is something that we are going to do in the next weeks. and then we will approach the civil aviation authorities in order for them to approve the way we are building this airplane. So these will be, I would say, the first moments of truth. Well, the first, I'm sure, of many. And on this point about the regulatory environment, we know that anything, basically, anything that flies, right, has these incredibly robust and rigorous approaches to safety and screening and so on. And you mention it as a moment of truth.

23:31I know one of your sort of passions, if you like, Bertrand, is this idea that you can't just talk about the ideas or the innovators. You have to get into the weeds of the legislation, the regulations. It's not always the sexiest part of the conversation, but we have to see innovation in legislation and in regulatory frameworks in order to unlock the kind of potential that can actually fix some of these big problems. Are you reassured that you're getting that kind of buy-in from some of these stakeholders who maybe have difficult reputations in terms of their appetite for change? Well, until now, I have always worked very smoothly with the civil aviation authorities in everything I've done.

24:13I hope it will continue because what we are aiming for is not a commercial certification, but it's a permit to fly. So the permit to fly will allow us to do our mission, but of course not for commercial flights. And this makes a big difference. Now, what I see in general, it's true that there is a trade-off to do between the past, the tradition, the way things have always been done, and the way things should be done in the future. You have to bring innovation, to include innovation into all the legislations, the certification process, the regulatory framework, the insurance conditions and things like that.

24:59And of course, the first condition is safety. It has to be absolutely safe. Bertrand, when I talk to you, it's pretty inspiring. And your appetite to tackle innovation, to bring all of this smart new thinking to bear on this whole space is really compelling. but it does sound like hard work. You're a sort of multidisciplinarian, right? You know, you're a psychiatrist, you're a doctor, an explorer, kind of an inventor. Are there not days when you just think, oh, do you know what? This is a bit tiring. Maybe I should have just stuck with just one or two or three of these disciplines. Or actually, is your appetite for a challenge always undimmed, even on those difficult days?

25:40You know, I think if I was ready to stop now, it means that I would not have had the spirit to succeed in what I did before. It's a constant appetite for improving. What is an explorer? An explorer is somebody who is not satisfied with the status quo, with the routine, with what he sees, with what he has. An explorer always wants it better, different. So this is why it's part of my life. It's not a job. It's not a profession. It's just me. If I have the possibility, after flying around the world in a balloon and flying around the world in a solar powered airplane, to initiate a project with a hydrogen airplane that can be useful for aviation, useful for the public, useful for climate action.