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Regent – Electric coastal travel
71–80 of 333 posts
Re: Regent – Electric coastal travel
#72Hey guys - Billy Thalheimer, Co-founder and CEO of REGENT here. A friend reached out to say this is blowing up - so cool! (Thank you beefman lol) Here to answer any questions
Andrew Levin is a former coworker of mine and it looks like he's still doing good work with y'all. Sharp dude, nice guy. Hope y'all win big.
Andrew is a genius. He's the man!
Re: Regent – Electric coastal travel
#73It would be pretty fantastic if this could go San Francisco to Los Angeles. A traditional plane flight takes so long at the airport, it ends up barely worth it. High speed rail in California would also be great, but they've been working on it for 15 years already, and at this rate, it doesn't look like the project will finish in the next 50 years.
> It would be pretty fantastic if this could go San Francisco to Los Angeles It can't, at least not nonstop: 160 nautical mile range, and SF to LA is about twice that straight line, and even longer following an overwater route. The planned 400nm range nexg gen battery tech upgrade is probably in the neighborhood, though.
I wonder if it might be worth having a little change-plane station at the half-way point - Cambria is nice!
Or do that thing Tesla tried to do: Land the plane, swap out the battery for a fully charged one, take off again.
EDIT: Here's why swapping batteries isn't likely worthwhile: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36053417
Re: Regent – Electric coastal travel
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
west LA (maybe SF?) to SB and central coast would make sense if this thing can deal with choppy waters.
I think you'd get people wanting to do that for the novelty, maybe once. Your departure "port" would wind up being Marina del Rey. Even if you lived down the street in Santa Monica, the time to get to the "port", board, etc, it's just a diminishing return of time investment. If you're okay with getting to Santa Barbara in 2 hours, you just make the drive. If you want to go faster, you're taking a helicopter. If you w…
>If you want to go faster, you're taking a helicopter. If you want the relaxing scenery for a longer duration without driving, you take the Surfliner.
The cost difference between a helicopter and a shuttle is huge though. I can easily see this being closer to the shuttle cost, while also closer to the helicopter speed. Seems like a sensible middle ground to me.
Re: Regent – Electric coastal travel
#75We've sold over 467 seagliders with a $7.9B order backlog spanning global aviation and ferry customers. I would think this is pre-launch sales. It's probably hedged with "subject to certification" risk, but it's still pretty solid, and if it came with sufficient deposit fundings to bootstrap the assembly line, all to the good. But, my understanding is that both boats and aircraft (and this is a join over the two) inc…
Seaglider entry to service is slated for mid-decade so you're spot on, all these are pre-launch sales. We're one of the few companies in the space with firm, nonrefundable deposits and contractually obligated pre-delivery payments (that scale with milestones as you mentioned) on the full first year of these orders. We take off at the periphery of harbors and fly over the open water in-between. Seagliders have 5ft wav…
Wave heights in the 8-13ft range are common along the US west coast (Northeast Pacific Ocean) and that doesn't shut down commercial aviation at coastal airports.
https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=46042
But still there are many more protected waters where a WIG vehicle could be viable.
Re: Regent – Electric coastal travel
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
so if a sailboat suddenly veers into the path of this thing, what is it going to do? Collide or ditch "GEVs may be unable to climb over or turn sharply enough to avoid collisions, while drastic, low-level maneuvers risk contact with solid or water hazards beneath. Aircraft can climb over most obstacles, but GEVs are more limited. "
Same thing as when a "sailboat" suddenly veers into the path of a heavy cargo ship. The rules of the sea are that steam gives way to sail, but physics puts obvious limits on that.
The law of gross tonnage is in fact derived from classical Newtonian physics.
Can't remember if they're considered "working vessels" over a sailboat, which would make them the stand-on vessel based on maneuverability anyway, but it's just silly to get in their way in the same way that it's silly to dawdle across train tracks.
Re: Regent – Electric coastal travel
#77Hey guys - Billy Thalheimer, Co-founder and CEO of REGENT here. A friend reached out to say this is blowing up - so cool! (Thank you beefman lol) Here to answer any questions
how much is one of these going for?
Re: Regent – Electric coastal travel
#78Hey guys - Billy Thalheimer, Co-founder and CEO of REGENT here. A friend reached out to say this is blowing up - so cool! (Thank you beefman lol) Here to answer any questions
How did you start this venture? Very impressive work
Re: Regent – Electric coastal travel
#79I was initially skeptical, but seeing Mokulele Airlines (an airline serving Hawaii) flash by on the carousel made me consider that this might have at least some real-world uses. It's insane to me that the vast majority of inter-island travel in Hawaii (an archipelago where generally each island is visible from the next) is via jet aircraft. You have to spend hours (especially if you're checking bags) getting to the a…
Crazy. Suspended due to "the potential to bring drugs and homeless people to Kauaʻi".
Re: Regent – Electric coastal travel
#80What if a slow moving sailboat came across this plane’s path? If it is using ground effect it couldn’t climb much.
The vehicle is limited to ground effect due to regulatory limitations and because it provides efficiency benefits but not physically. There are different classifications of WIGs, class B allows for hops over things so this could be a future option. In reality a sailboat is a pretty easy thing to avoid. Since its basically flat on the water, there aren't many large obstructions to line of sight and something like a sa…
To be clear, seagliders are limited to ground effect in that it is physically impossible for the captain to remove the vehicle from ground effect. The flight control system locks the vehicle to within a wingspan of the surface.