Why Electric Aviation Is Finally Becoming Possible | Anders Forslund

Speaker A: Electrification is the catalyst for a brand new way of thinking about aircraft. Ultimately, I think we can have a place where you can build aircraft that are much more competitive, that are much more high margin. And electrification is just this catalyst. It's this once in a generation opportunity for us to make that transition. And I think a company coming at the right time can sort of challenge the duopoly and come in and define how air travel is going to look in the 21st century.

Speaker B: Hardware to Save a Planet explores the technical innovations that are giving us hope in the fight against climate change. Each episode focuses on a specific climate challenge and explores an emerging physical technology solution with the person bringing it into reality. I'm your host, Dylan Garrett. Hardware to Save a Planet is brought to you by synapse. Make sure to click subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. Thanks for listening. Hello and welcome to Hardware to Save a Planet. I'm here with Anders Forslund, the co founder and CEO of Heart Aerospace. Anders and his team are decarbonizing regional air travel. They're developing a 30 passenger hybrid electric plane called the ES30 for flights up to 500 miles. This is a, uh, really important topic because air travel accounts for around 2 or 3% of global CO2 emissions and these short haul regional flights are actually more carbon intensive per mile than long haul flights. I've had a number of guests call out hart, Aerospace specifically and aviation in general as topics to focus an episode on. So I'm excited to have Anders here. Prior to founding Hart in 2018, he spent his career in aerospace, including a PhD focused on aerospace structural design at Chalmers University where he was also involved in Project Elise with the goal of electrifying air transport in Sweden. In the last eight years, he's led HART from early concept to building a full scale demonstration aircraft called X1 that has received FAA clearance to fly. And along the way they've secured some really impressive investors including Breakthrough Energy, Lower Carbon Capital, Y Combinator, and um, some strategic investors, major airlines including United and Air Canada. Um, Anders, it's awesome to have you. Thanks for being here.

Speaker A: Thank you. Excited to be here.

Speaker B: So what's, what's your origin story? I thought we'd start there because I see, I look at your LinkedIn, I see kind of aerospace all the time. Uh, I'm curious, were you one of those kids who grew up fascinated with airplanes?

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I actually, um, I started in kindergarten, uh, obsessing with folding paper airplanes.

Speaker B: So. Nice.

Speaker A: That's really how I got started. Uh, I grew up in Sweden at a time when you'd still see a lot of, you know, Sweden build their own fighter jets. So you'd see uh, you know, over the soccer field you see the Viggen aircraft go very low. And you sort of got super impressed by that and yeah, and started, uh, did a little bit of, in education. I did. First worked a lot on space, but then I, for my PhD, I started working on jet engines and really the product development and I think about 12 years ago when I was at MIT, um, Elon shows up and he talks about the electrification of flight, uh, that batteries are becoming better, electrification of air travel is inevitable. And here I was chasing diminishing returns on jet engines, not really understanding how my career would look for the next 30 years, just becoming increasingly aware of the carbon uh, footprint of aviation. Um, and it felt like a call to arms already at that time I was sort of tinkering with, with drones at my kitchen table sort of in the evening and nighttime and just decided to sort of devote myself uh, to, to the electrification of air travel. And I did uh, so through, you know, starting in the Nordics, trying to understand a little bit what the market was, uh, and then for the past seven years with this company and say

Speaker B: a little bit more about that technology context. Elon showed up and said batteries were ready for air travel. Is it just purely like an energy density?

Speaker A: I mean, yes, it's sort of energy density is the constraint. Uh, right. And what Elon said specifically, I think at that time batteries were about 250 watt hours per kilogram on the cell level. And he said as soon as they hit 400 that's when we're going to really see this thing take off. And right now we're actually testing cells

Speaker B: in the lab that have that.

Speaker A: So uh, uh, we've hit, 12 years later, we've hit that inflection point. So does battery energy density ultimately determine how far you go? But that's not really the driver of adoption here. We uh, can build aircraft that fly far enough. But the thing that is going to cause electric and hybrid electric to take over is the insane benefit that you get in terms of unit economics. You mentioned our first flight which is coming up. It's very, very shortly. We're going to be flying the world's largest electric airplane, the world's first electric airliner. Um, and the energy costs for taking this 30 seater, 25,000 pound aircraft up in the air for uh, the first test flight is going to be less than $10 somewhere between 5 and $7. Uh, so that is what I think is the most exciting part of this technology. And uh, so what we're creating is a product that, you know, in addition to the climate advantage, has this sort of negative green premium. Um, and I think it's going to transform aviation.

Speaker B: What would the energy cost of that flight be on a, like a turboprop?

Speaker A: Yes, so it would be, I mean, so first of all, if we were to fly a full as sort Ah, of 125 mile flight, our energy costs would be somewhere between 50 and $200 depending on where you're flying it. And that would be a factor 10 at least for what a turboprop.

Speaker B: Is what has changed to make the unit economics so favorable or is it kind of a combination of the energy density?

Speaker A: So I think what's changed over the past years is that energy density has gone up on batteries. Costs have come down and also the developments just in electric vehicles in general. So electric cars has commoditized a lot of the power electronics, charging, etc. That makes this thing fly, that makes it possible.

Speaker B: So you're kind of um, you're able to take advantage of the whole automotive industry and the investment that's gone into the battery technology and the scale of, of production, I guess kind of the economies of scale that are coming from everything that's happening in electric vehicles. Is that kind of the right way to think about it?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's definitely the right way to think about it. We have so far and we will continue to do so as technology improves even more in automotive. The crazy Delta is that automotive is generally two orders of magnitude less expensive than uh, than aviation. So if a product is developed for automotive, say um, if you take an electric truck, say a Tesla semi M, that is roughly 1% of the cost or two orders of magnitude of what our aircraft is. So what we can. Yeah, it's crazy, right? So aircraft is just such a great product so that we're used to them being very, very expensive both to buy and also to operate. But uh, there's nothing inherent about a winged platform that makes it more expensive than a wheeled platform. Uh, it's just historical reasons and the fact that it's been developed for much larger, a smaller market. So I think really the key for any success in aviation is how do you create synergies with what much larger industries are doing? Um, so yeah, that is the opportunity here and I think it's a sort of once in a generation opportunity for aviation.

Speaker B: And if we rewind back to 2018, when you founded HAART, what was going on specifically at that time and for you that made that the right time to do this.

Speaker A: So at that time, I think when people looked at this, a lot of the early uh, hype in this sector has been around what's called EVTOLs, electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles. So when Elon talked about electrifying air travel and people looked at drones and they looked at Tesla cars and they thought what if we can build a drone that can fly a human sort of the flying car vision of back to the future. Um, and that's what a lot of the developments happened. But what happened for me in 2018 was Norway announced that they want all their domestic flights to be 100% electric by the year 2040. And I saw that the EVTOL as much, uh, you know, the flying cars are not the right answer for Norway. It is to build a larger aircraft, um, that operates conventionally. Um, and uh, so there was not a product to meet the demand. So that's why we started the company and we went through YC and all of this stuff and we were initially very focused on the climate angle and the Nordic angle. But you uh, know, after a few years we got United on board, they wrote an order for 100 aircraft and you know, it's just, it started growing and the largest market in the world is obviously the US it has 5,000 airports whereas Norway has 50. And uh, you know, it was driven by these climate goals but also by these unit economics that uh, would allow regional operations to flourish.

Speaker B: And just on the climate side for a sec, um, uh, I mean I mentioned the total emissions. Is that really the way to think about it? Is that, is that why this is, this is an important thing to focus on from a climate perspective. It's just that like these are, these are hard kind of long tail emissions for us to, to abate.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, of course. And, and air travel is one of the hardest things to decarbonize.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker A: And I think we're not going to get to full electrification of air travel. Um, of long range or even narrow bodies is going to be mostly going to be hybrid systems. So even our aircraft, we haven't really talked about this yet, but our aircraft, the 30 seater aircraft does have a hybrid system and I think that's going to be there for the foreseeable future. What the electrification does is it allows a lot of those operations to be flown a part of it to be flown all electrically for longer missions and that reduces the cost. Um, and if you pair that for instance with sustainable aviation fuels which are more expensive. Electrification um, can offset uh, those costs and sort of support the transition even for, for medium and long haul flights.

Speaker B: Okay, yeah, so that's interesting. I was going to ask how this, if, if you, if we should look at this as sort of a, a competing alternative to sustainable aviation fuels or. It sounds like it's actually kind of complementary.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean the energy density of jet fuel is incredible. Like you have sort of 12,000 watt hours per kilogram and the best batteries are 400. Uh, then obviously jet, jet, uh, uh, jet planes have about one third of the efficiency of electric systems in terms of combustion and all these things. So if you meet these two in the middle, you can create the value of hybrid, the climate. Um, if you put these two things together, you can create the value of electric in the emissions and the economics. Um, with the, with the energy M density that allows for long missions on jet fuel.

Speaker B: And how much of the total number can we, could we potentially take a bite out of then if we're using electric for the short flights, Sustainable aviation fuel and these hybrid systems for long haul flights?

Speaker A: Well, I think or about one third of the emissions from aviation are from flights that are under 1,000 miles. And I think for those electric can play be the dominant thing by 2050 for sure. Um, but also for the longer flights I think we can see reductions in um, fuel consumption by 20 to 40%.

Speaker B: Well you started talking about it a little bit. Uh, your ES30 is your first uh, kind of commercial aircraft you're planning. Um, I was, I was curious. So the specs are uh, that I saw your website. 30 passengers, 125 miles of electric range, 500 miles of hybrid range. Um, I'm curious to kind of go back to the very early stages of kind of product definition. Product, you know, when you're just sort of concepting this aircraft, how did you land on those specs? Like why is that the right size, the right full electric range, the right hybrid range? Um, because I imagine you're sort of optimizing all these like technical and commercial constraints together to land on that.

Speaker A: Yeah. So we basically settled, uh, so first of all, the first thing you have to settle is what's going to be your battery mass fraction of your aircraft. So how large part of your battery is going to be an aircraft? Because that's going to stay fixed. So 125 miles, all electrically is with the batteries that we're testing right now that we'll have at entry into service. Uh, but as battery energy density increases, so does also the electric range. So within a decade or so you'll be able to fly 200, 250 miles all electrically, but the mass of the battery will stay the same. And that's important for sort of your flight, uh, dynamics and your uh, aerodynamics. You don't want to change the weight of the aircraft. So that's why we picked the 125 miles or 200 kilometers as the sweet spot. Um, so historically 30 seaters in the US the average route length is about 172 miles. So it means that we can address a lot of these routes already with this. Um, and so that's always been the natural place to land. It's something we've uh, worked a lot with our airline partners as well. So it's the sort of Pareto optimal. And besides that, we're trying to build an aircraft that is just, you know, not where technology is not getting in the way. Right. Like, what I think is really important to understand is that electrification is the catalyst for a brand new way of thinking about aircraft. So it's about redoing the system architecture, um, it's about increasing, building software defined vehicles, it's about bringing in commoditized um, parts and verticalizing a lot of the production. And ultimately I think you can have a place where you can build aircraft that are much more competitive, that are much more high margin. Um, and electrification is just this catalyst. It's this once in a generation opportunity for us to make that transition. And I think a company coming at the right time, um, can sort of challenge the duopoly and uh, and come in and define how air travel is going to look in the 21st century. So that's obviously our goal with this company.

Speaker B: Explain that a little bit. Why is it that electrification is the catalyst for some of those things that seem at least to me like not directly related to electrification? Like could, could you adopt uh, some of those manufacturing techniques? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: I mean, so I think it's very, I think there's definitely way, there's, you know, I'm a PhD, so I could tend to go very academic on it. I is very much of an innovator's dilemma. Uh, it's just the idea of uh, when the product, when a paradigm shift happens, when there's disruptive innovation, it doesn't really start at the narrow body side. It doesn't really start. It's not plug and play generally, it's catering to a different market that is somewhat smaller um, and that allows new entrants to come in. And then as technology grows and scales, that's when you see the paradigm shifts happen. So it's a very, this is something you've seen time and again when we have technology shifts. So in analogy it's very much like when with EVs with companies like Tesla, with companies like SpaceX, um, in space. Um, so for instance with EVs what you're seeing is that it's the new companies, the Teslas and the Rivians, that are managing to build electric vehicles that have other high margins. They're the ones that are able to build the electric vehicles, that have the advanced software that are software defined, that enable autonomy, et cetera, because they've been able to re architect the platform for the new technology. Generally you have this thing called Conway's Law which is like an established organization is constrained to build architectures or products that are mirrors of their organizational structure. That's I think what we're going to see in aerospace. It's very hard for hardware companies to become hardware based companies that, to become software based companies, for instance, or companies that outsource all of their software and hardware and components, uh, to verticalize that.

Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. And that actually aligns with some other guests I've talked to that are kind of disrupting other industries. I was hoping you could walk me through your hardware iterations. So you have this X1 now that's built and we said at the beginning that it's um, that it's been cleared for by uh, the FAA for flight testing, which is cool. And I want to hear about that as well. Um, have you had other prototypes, physical prototypes and iterations of the system prior to that? And then what else is beyond X1 to get to where we're actually flying commercial flights with the ES30.

Speaker A: So yeah, so the X1 is a full scale demonstrator. We built a subscale demonstrator before that was kind of RC aircraft size with like a 5 meter wingspan. Um, but also this aircraft has seen a lot of iteration on itself. We've re engineered most of the systems on the aircraft from the first iteration to the second. Um, uh, but it's to demonstrator, it's meant to show that we can build electrification at this scale. It's um, showing that we as a company cannot just build it, but also take it through a flight test campaign. But also it's showing our central value proposition which is that this flight was going to be under $10. So um, that is what we're trying to show now. After this we want to build a pre production prototype that has the full hybrid system. Um, so that is actually a very hard thing that we're working in parallel. We're testing the components and the hybrid system on the ground right now and we're going to, after this flight we're going to start working on that pre production prototype. And that's very, very close to what we'll then be certifying and bringing to customers by 2031.

Speaker B: And what's hard about that?

Speaker A: Uh, well, yeah, so with the hybrid system, I think it's really about finding you have to bring in the jet technology in it and that's an expensive technology. You have to figure out how to do it with mostly off the shelf components so that you're not having a large development project. Um, uh, and so essentially it's a system that's going to be used when you're flying the longer routes, but also for reserves. So uh, it's actually quite big of a challenge. It's not that it's technically um, unheard of. We have APUs on every aircraft. So we have turbines that are generating electricity uh, in every aircraft that flies today. So there's a lot of precedent. But um, but yeah, it is, it is. Um, yeah, that's going to be a large part of what we're doing next. But also, you know, so, so we want to be building an aircraft that can fly the full electric range to full hybrid range and uh, and then work our way through uh, certification and conformance of the production then, and then by 2031 is when we'll be in commercial service. But this pre production aircraft will fly already in 28.

Speaker B: I'm sure that you have modeled and simulated the X1 to the nth degree prior to doing these test flights that you're about to do. I guess I'm wondering what do you learn when you actually go from the simulated and modeled version of the plane to building the thing? What are some of the things that have been surprises or you weren't expecting?

Speaker A: Yeah, we still rely a lot on physical testing. So simulation is really good for getting, you know, um, for making sure you're building the right thing. But to validate you got to test it. Like you can't just simulate your way. You know, you have, then you're making a bunch of assumptions when you're simulating about how materials work. All the mathematical simplification. This is actually my thesis. I could go really down the rabbit hole, but there's so many uncertainties when you're doing simulations and you don't really like, there's uh, many examples where simulations show one thing and the real world shows another thing. So you can't really trust it. What you can do with simulation is you can design something and you could optimize it and you can size it and then you go test it. So what we have done is extensive testing. So it's about bending wings, it's what's called a static load, tests of wings and actuators, control surfaces, et cetera. So you basically push them up to a higher load than they will ever see in flight and then you feel confident that the wing won't break. Um, then you do um, similar thing for all your control surfaces. So how you steer the aircraft, so the ailerons, rudders, actuator, um, um, elevators, um, you put all your components through a lot of component testing. So basically you put them on shaker tables. So you shake them to 10Gs and see if electronics break, et cetera. Um, then you do have a principle which I think central to aviation is not to never allow failures, but it's to have a uh, failure proof design. So what you do for instance with flight controls, this is a full fly by wire system, is that you have triple redundancy for all your computers and then you have a dual redundancy for your actuation. So if a computer has a malfunction, um, if you have three of them, you will see that m hopefully it's only one of them that is malfunctioning and then you can trust the other two, which is a really central thing. Uh, and then with actuation it's like if you lose one of your actuators, you could still have authority with the other one. And then on top of that, this is how you try to minimize the odds of anything going wrong. And on top of that you then have hours and hours of training with your test pilot where you fly a simulator and then you kill off things. So you say, oh you're, you're going down to land now we're going to kill off all your engines or you're going to kill off your actuation or you know, do all these things and you, you come up with a, uh, with a mitigation strategy so that you can land this aircraft even if something like that happens. So it's um, it's, it's, it's, you know, this is the real deal. It's, you know, you're putting a pilot in this aircraft and you got to make sure that nothing happens.

Speaker B: Right. Yeah. Even the X1 kind of demonstrator prototype is a real deal, I think, is your point. Like all of these redundancies and safety mechanisms are in place even at this prototype stage because there is a human in there flying in.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So we've held ourselves accountable to a much higher standard than what's actually required by experimental aircraft. And it's partly because we want to make sure that the pilot is as safe as we possibly can, but partly because that's the road we're going to go down where we build the next aircraft. And the more we can, uh, learn around and the more we, you know, we could, um. Yeah. Expose ourselves to the certification testing, the more we do de risk the program.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You, you talked about testing, uh, the wing, the, the load bearing capacity of the wings and, and the control surfaces and things like that. Are, are there things about your aircraft that have required you to reinvent some of these things? Because I, I imagine wing design is a very well studied and tested thing that in theory it seems like you could copy and paste a little bit. Um, but maybe that's simplifying too much.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, when we look at this, so an aircraft like ours, it's in the commercial aircraft category called airliner category called part 25. We have about 3,000 different certification requirements for this aircraft and we've gone through them and uh, about 94% of them are normal conditions. So very similar to how you build aircraft in 1960s, basically in terms of testing material allowances and then 5% is special conditions. But that can include everything from composites to batteries that actually have precedent. So even though it's a special condition, it doesn't mean that it's never been done. And then only about 20 of those 3,000 requirements, about 0.7% of them are unique to our airframe. Um, and that are things like using, um, the turbines, uh, um, for serves, et cetera. But even then we have the sort of, um, baseline of APUs. So what we're really trying to do is to not create innovation for the sake of innovation, but to take what's the state of the art, combine it and really play, do this sort of iteration loop where you're trying to remove parts, where you're trying to simplify designs and try to build something that is, you know, through simplicity, safety and low cost come hand in hand. So that's what we're trying to do.

Speaker B: I guess this is a very specific question, but like, are you, as a startup I imagine you can't just go download Boeing's CAD and replicate their wing designs. Like, what does that process actually look like to, uh, build on the state of the art?

Speaker A: First of all, I think the basics of wing design or I mean this is in any textbook, the sizing and all of these things. It's not that it's rocket science. Um, there's obviously, um, what's happened in the advanced materials and production techniques. I think that's a lot where secret sauce have been. But also it's important to recognize also that for the narrow body segment, Boeing for instance, they're still working on a platform, the 737, which originates in the 1950s. So that's the 707 that then became the 737. So if you look at the Boeing, uh, what's called a dash 80, the 367, uh, it's a 1950s platform that they built. It has an identical nose, a lot of identical systems to what we're flying today. So the problem with aviation is that a lot of things, there are advances. There have been actually Today, it's about 17 years ago since Boeing last flew the Dreamliner, which is the last clean sheet airliner that has been built in the US that's uh, 17 years. So there's been a lot of development since. But it's very hard to implement that if you're not building a new airframe. And I think that's maybe the most underappreciated thing about what we're doing, uh, that, you know, we're trying to,

Speaker B: you

Speaker A: know, the ability to build and produce aircraft. I mean, sort of in your question it feels like, hey, there's a book somewhere, you know, maybe in the vaults of one of the established manufacturer that you can go in and you read it and then you know everything about designing aircraft and that's really not how it works. Right. Like the, there's, sure there's documentations, there's best practices, but it's kind of like saying, I have a book that teaches me French and I have it in my drawer, so I speak French. Right. It doesn't really work like that. Right. The art of building an aircraft is a highly human skill that requires, I think, a lot of hands on experience. You got to use it or lose it. And there's um, when there's not that informal sort of passing of the torch between generation to generation, then you're in trouble, right? So I'm in my early 40s, uh, so I'm not super young, but I'M still part of a generation that never got to work on a clean sheet aircraft platform. So people that are my age that are working at the oem, they never got to do it right. And now we're talking, you know, the incumbents are talking about building a new aircraft in the late2030s. So it means that you are, you have a lost generation. So you lose the bridge between the past and the present and then it becomes very hard, very expensive, uh, to build new platforms because you have an engineering base that hasn't gotten the reputations in.

Speaker B: It's never done it before.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I think this is a much, much bigger challenge than a lot of people realize and we're seeing that being played out. So I think part of what we're doing here is just we're saying, okay, we're a bunch of aerospace engineers. Many of us have a similar profile where we started working in legacy aerospace, then went to companies like SpaceX, uh, and saw a different way of doing things. And we're trying to, just to keep um, the craft alive of building airframes.

Speaker B: The last question I was going to ask you about kind of your hardware is you have this um, you have this test flight coming up. I'm wondering if you can just describe what the plans are for that and what you're hoping to learn from that process.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean the plan is to uh, it's going to be the successful first flight of the world's largest electric plane by a large margin. So it's more than 2x the size of any aircraft that came before. It's also clean sheet. So there's been attempt or there's been um, successes in converting Cessna Caravans, so much smaller aircraft, um, and flying them electrically. But this is a clean sheet, regional full scale demonstrator of a 30 seater aircraft. So it is, it's a really big aircraft. So showing that that is possible is something that's super important. But besides that, it is also showing the economic benefit here that the fact that this is going to be less than $10 for the first flight and also showing that we can do it, showing that this is uh, that a small company, a small team, a startup can be, um, you know, can build aircraft.

Speaker B: I wanted to hear about your business model and I'm curious, just kind of the basic question like who are your customers and what will you be selling to them?

Speaker A: Yes, so, um, our customers are United Airlines, for instance, uh, Air Canada. Both are also investors, but airlines all over the world, uh, also in places like uh, the Nordics, you have SAS and Air New Zealand, et cetera. We have an advisory board with airlines really from all over the world. And our mainline business model is to sell aircraft. Uh, but the aircraft is a platform that lasts about 30 years. So even if you buy an aircraft, you're going to be using that same airframe for about 30 years, whereas the batteries have a life of about two years. You know, you're cycling batteries very heavily. So our business model is also to provide those batteries, um, which is going to be a recurring revenue for us every two years and also giving our customers an opportunity to upgrade their aircraft to the latest and greatest chemistry.

Speaker B: Right. So they could be flying the original ES30 that started with 125 miles of range and then a few years later get a few more miles of range because they've replaced the batteries. Exactly. Yeah. That's interesting.

Speaker A: So it's sort of, we become tied in not only to the airframe side, but also to the propulsion side and to the fuel side. So we're able to, uh, monetize a lot more parts than a traditional airframe or can.

Speaker B: When you're selling into an industry that typically gets 30 years of life out of their aircraft, what does that look like for sales for you? Are you. They have to either be expanding their fleet or retiring aircrafts and replacing old fuel with these or.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's very cyclical. Right. So the aircraft that we're competing with, they're turbo props, which are all came around 40 years ago. So it's 40 year old designs. So there was a big um, boom in turboprops. Uh, so it was like five different projects that came out in the mid-1980s. That's only one of them that is still producing aircraft. It's ATR, uh, but it's still, it's a 40 year old design and obviously if people buy an aircraft now, it will be a 70 year old design by the time you stop using it. Um, so there's a cyclical nature to product introduction, um, in aerospace. So. Uh, yeah, well, I guess I was

Speaker B: just curious, um, does that make it hard to sell? Because they're just not turning over these aircraft very often. They're just not buying a lot of new aircraft. Because they last for so long.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, I mean they're continuously being replaced and those that are not being replaced are being, uh, kept on life support. But a lot of these, like I mentioned in Norway, for instance, they have the mandate that all, ah, short haul flights be 100% electric by 2040. So do you Then go and buy a turboprop aircraft so that you could use it for 13, 14 years when you're supposed to amortize it in 30. So there's a lot of those challenges. And I think on top of that, what has been really challenging over the last year, um, is the fluctuations and the increases in price of jet fuel. So obviously it's highly unstable situation right now in the world with regards to oil supply. And I think that might be the new normal.

Speaker B: So even if potentially, um, aircraft isn't totally end of life, it could make financial sense to economic sense for a company to buy this place an older plane.

Speaker A: But you could go into sites like Flightradar24 and you can just go to regional airlines and see what their average fleet size is. And generally it's pretty old fleets that are flying around with turboprops.

Speaker B: When you think about kind of the future of HART Aerospace, uh, and maybe even the airline industry in general, we touched on this a little bit, but I guess, yeah. What's your vision for the future of heart? How much of the kind of airline industry do you want to be able to address? How much of that like 2 to 3% emissions do you want to address?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I wanted to address. I, uh, mean I think we started this conversation. We were, we want to address about one third of the emissions that are coming from short haul flights that are under 13, uh, hundred kilometers. So that's 800 miles. Um, but we want to go bigger as well. Hybrid systems make sense for, for, for uh, for narrow body. Even for wide bodies, you know, the um, the economic improvement is not as dramatic as for regional, but it's only going to get improved and it's drastically better. In uh, in a way that means that, I mean everybody's looking at this right now. You know, even the incumbent propulsion manufacturers just came from Farnborough where you know, GE was talking a lot about their hybrid, hybridization of their propulsion system for narrow bodies. So that's where the market is going. And what this allows us to do is to build a regional aircraft, uh, in a place where, you know, the large incumbents are not competing and develop that technology and scale it from there.

Speaker B: And you've mentioned a couple dates, but maybe you could lay it out for me again, like when, when do you think it's realistic for us to be flying on electric aircraft for, for regional flights and then even out further in the future for, for longer haul flights to be on these hybrid systems?

Speaker A: So regional flights, our aircraft is going to be type certified in 2031. So, uh, that's when you start flying these. So early 2000s and then late 2000s is when we'll see the first narrow bodies.

Speaker B: Okay. And that would be like a cross country flight potentially, or.

Speaker A: Yeah, it would be sort of replacing the A320s, uh, and uh, the 737s. And so. Yeah.

Speaker B: Cool. I have three questions I ask everybody at the end of each episode. Um, I'm ready to do that. Unless there's anything else you wanted to hit.

Speaker A: No, let's do it.

Speaker B: All right. The first is how optimistic or pessimistic are you about the future of the planet and why?

Speaker A: I mean, I'm optimistic about the future and I think we owe it to be optimistic. Um, I think coming from Sweden, where we've had a lot of climate awareness, which is great, but also a lot of pessimism, a lot of sort of doomsday rhetoric. And you know, it's led to a bad place. It's led to a place where, you know, one third of the young people in Sweden say they don't want to have kids because of climate change. And I think that's, that's sort of almost a psychological warfare that you do on your young generation. Um, I think we're going to have effects, they're going to be dramatic in many ways. Um, but I also think that we're going to, you know, this is not a civilizational collapse that is happening. Um, we've seen hard things happen before and there is technology, the technology. I would say on the flip side, there are people that are saying that technology will automatically solve it. I think we need to have technology together with very thoughtful leadership. Um, but I think we've tried to. When we're too alarmist around climate, uh, we almost cause, um, uh, sort of, we almost become incapacitated by it.

Speaker B: Yeah, what's the point in even trying kind of thing.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And we need to present a story which is the future. Yes, it's going to be different because of climate, but it's also going to be great. We're going to create technologies. Uh, we got to solve this. I mean, we got to, um, you know, everything else, but uh, sustainability is unsustainable by definition. So, uh, it's just a question of how far do we get there. And I think there's exciting technologies. I think the world is becoming a better place in many ways.

Speaker B: And

Speaker A: yeah, I wouldn't say the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. But, uh, yeah, because we're Also seeing that who do we want to be? Do we want to be the people that contributed to building a better world or we want to be the people that get to say I told you so when things don't turn out well? Um, so, uh, I mean if we can solve this in aviation, if we can build sustainable aviation, I think that's one of the hardest nuts to crack that I think there's nothing that can't be solved.

Speaker B: Who is another company or individual doing something to address climate change that's inspiring you?

Speaker A: I mean I've obviously started this journey with Elon and what he's done, uh, on electric cars and I think that's dramatic. So obviously drive my Tesla every day. So I think something like that is, yeah, that's an amazing contribution that's been made. Um, but I see it all everywhere I look. Also there's great founders.

Speaker B: What advice do you have for someone not working in climate today who wants to do something to help?

Speaker A: Well, I think it's to really find your passion. If you want to build climate tech, it needs to stand on its own feet. I think that's the point. So what we're doing with electrification of air travel is something that would have made sense, uh, even if there were no climate benefits because it's is simply cheaper. So when you start a project, I think first of all you should ask

Speaker B: yourself,

Speaker A: are you not just building, are you dependent on climate, uh, regulation or dependent on climate awareness to drive adoption? And if so I think that's going to be very hard. So try to find something, ah, where your product is simply better. Um, then I think it's important to find your passion as well. I think if you're just passionate about, it's great if you're passionate about making a difference but, but if, if you don't feel the like, if I didn't feel the passion for airplanes, then it would hard to, to go at a problem like this that is so hard for so long. So I think, um, yeah, when we hire people we want to find people that are really, really passionate about aircraft because that's what uh, what the day to day, the uh, nitty gritty of what we do every day, uh, that's the skill set that they need to use.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: It's great that people are mission driven. Ah and that's obviously something that can m, inspire and motivate people even more. But if you don't have the domain expertise and the passion of what you're doing, then you're not going to be able to sustain it.

Speaker B: Um, Anders, this is really fun. I've learned a lot. Um, I'm excited to be flying on a ES30 sometime in the next five or six years. That's pretty exciting. And, uh, hope we can get together and fold some paper airplanes sometimes.

Speaker A: That's. That's good. Yes, let's do that. We have a. We have. We have a lot of hanger space. We can. We can do this. So, yeah, come on over.

Speaker B: All right, sounds good.

Speaker A: All right, have a good one.

Speaker B: Hardware to Save a Planet is brought to you by synapse. To find out more about us and how we develop hardware solutions for the world's most ambitious companies, head to synapse.com and then make sure to search for Hardware to Save a Planet and Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you like to listen. Make sure to click subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. On behalf of the team here at synapse, thanks for listening.