Presumably anyone who wants to fly this would still have to go through a traditional pilot qualification with an old-school plane? So this is actually targeting people who do fly airplanes, but want to be more comfortable and more able to focus on the navigation and general enjoyment of the air while reducing the actual risk of flying, rather than having to, as you put it, micromanage the aircraft. As someone who likes nothing better than to look out of the window of a passenger jet with the GPS and map on my phone in my hand to see where I am, and to know which geographical features are unravelling below, I kinda get it.
They don't necessarily have to learn in an old school plane. In fact, our early adopters who aren't pilots will be getting their flight training through us in an Airhart airplane (included in the purchase of the airplane)
In the near future, a new set of regulations is coming out called MOSAIC, which will allow pilots to learn how to fly purely in simplified control aircraft. This is expected to come roughly at the same time as when we begin production, so we hope that new pilots will be able to learn under these new regulations and not have to learn the old-school way of flying at all.
From a marketing and pitch perspective, I’m imagining the “shake up” potential of your plane being much more ala iPhone or Tesla. Hard to describe but once you experience it you get a diehard fan that won’t go back to whatever else is on the market.
Is your first plane more of a roadster or a model 3, and what does your path look like to getting to a plane that has a cult following?
this is definitely more of the "roadster". we will be building a limited number to get it into peoples hands as quickly as possible, with future models being lower cost, more efficient, and hopefully even better in terms of control systems, avionics, and autonomy
