Brandon Robinson, CEO of New Horizon Aircraft Ltd, was recently a guest on Benzinga's All-Access.
New Horizon Aircraft is an advanced aerospace engineering company that is developing one of the world's first hybrid electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that is to be able to fly most of its mission exactly like a normal aircraft while offering industry-leading speed, range and operational utility. The company's unique designs put the mission first and prioritize safety, performance and utility.
The company recently provided updates on technical testing for its flagship product.
New Horizon Aircraft is an advanced aerospace engineering company that is developing one of the world's first hybrid electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that is to be able to fly most of its mission exactly like a normal aircraft while offering industry-leading speed, range and operational utility. The company's unique designs put the mission first and prioritize safety, performance and utility.
The company recently provided updates on technical testing for its flagship product.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Brandon, welcome to the show.
00:06 - Hey, Zinnate, thanks for having us back.
00:07 Really appreciate it, man, thank you.
00:09 - Absolutely, look, anytime a company has anything to do
00:12 with flight, space, travel, I'm always interested,
00:15 hoping that you can get me a VIP treatment one time.
00:18 'Cause one time's all I ask it for.
00:20 - We got it, put your name on it, man.
00:22 You just say the word.
00:23 - We are live, it is recorded.
00:25 It is clipped on the internet forever, but nah, man,
00:27 it's great to have you on.
00:28 But for the folks that might not be familiar
00:30 with your company, give us a quick insight
00:32 on what is it that you do.
00:33 - Yeah, so we're building a really interesting
00:35 type of aircraft.
00:36 So this new type of aircraft leverages electric power
00:40 and it can take off and land vertically,
00:42 just like a helicopter.
00:43 But on route, it can go about twice as fast as a helicopter,
00:46 which is pretty cool and is way cheaper to own and operate.
00:49 So really anything a helicopter can do,
00:51 where primarily it's going from point A to point B,
00:54 we're building a better version of that.
00:57 - Got it, understood.
00:58 Now I know you have, over the past several months,
01:01 you've had a lot of incredible progress, right?
01:03 You cleared significant engineering hurdles
01:05 that you may have been facing in the past,
01:07 especially with the flight testing program
01:09 that you had great strides in forward to as well.
01:12 Give us a little bit of insight on that,
01:14 the continued flight testing process that's going on
01:16 with the full transition to forward flight.
01:18 Give us a little bit of a scoop on that.
01:21 - Yeah, so over the last kind of six months,
01:23 we've proven that the aircraft performs incredibly well
01:26 in hover and sort of slower forward flight profiles,
01:29 and we're creeping up to what's called transition speed.
01:32 And so in our aircraft, okay,
01:33 so the hover is taken care of,
01:35 and now as it moves forward in faster and faster speeds,
01:38 at a certain speed, it's called transition speed,
01:41 the wings transform.
01:42 That's our patented technology.
01:44 The wings transform and return the aircraft
01:45 to a normal configuration, just like a normal aircraft.
01:49 So instead of flying like a helicopter
01:51 with blades spinning around all over the place,
01:53 it just flies on very efficient wing worn flight.
01:55 So our flight test program has been going very, very well,
01:59 and we're slowly approaching that final speed
02:01 where we can transform the wings back
02:04 to that of a normal aircraft.
02:06 So that's been going extremely well.
02:08 - And then you also have the detailed design
02:11 of the full scale,
02:12 I believe it's called the X7 Hybrid E-Volt aircraft.
02:16 That's on track for completion and testing in 2026?
02:19 - That's correct.
02:20 So a lot of really good lessons learned
02:22 from our large scale prototype.
02:24 So still 22 foot wingspan,
02:26 the thing's a really large aircraft.
02:29 Some of the aerodynamic and mechanical lessons learned
02:33 translate directly to the full scale design.
02:35 So a lot of really positive results,
02:37 and we're able to refine the full scale design.
02:39 Now we're actually building full scale parts.
02:42 So we'll have a 6,000 pound, seven person aircraft
02:47 ready to go in the next 24 to 30 months for flight testing.
02:51 - I will find six friends to hop on a flight with me.
02:54 No question about that.
02:55 I was looking at this and yaw is something
02:59 that I'm interested in because I was on a flight
03:02 to our event in Florida and our aircraft
03:05 had some yaw issues.
03:07 It was very scary and we had to make a U-turn and come back.
03:09 So it's clearly important to a airplane system.
03:13 Talk to me about the validation of the patent pending
03:16 on the yaw control system that you currently have going on,
03:18 especially as it comes to sustainability
03:20 and control for the pilots that I know is so important.
03:24 - Yeah, so great question again, Zineed.
03:26 So one of the things we pride ourselves at Horizon Aircraft
03:29 is that we're a team of operators and pilots first.
03:32 And of course, amazing aerospace engineers on the team
03:35 doing their amazing work,
03:36 but we're quite an operational company,
03:39 if that makes any sense.
03:40 So whereas there's a lot of companies in the space
03:43 that were born out of either Silicon Valley
03:45 or some university think tanks that,
03:48 some great designs on paper,
03:50 but we're priding ourselves on a functional design
03:52 that is very safe and very comfortable in the real world.
03:57 So one of the critical things that we need to focus on
04:01 is how does the aircraft control its yaw?
04:05 So if it has a very significant side vector,
04:08 there's a gust of wind from the side,
04:10 a lot of aircraft will want to immediately
04:12 get jostled around and point into the wind
04:15 and maybe there's some roll
04:16 and it's very uncomfortable for the passengers.
04:19 We have a patented system
04:21 that NASA was actually quite interested in, to be honest,
04:24 that allows, or sorry, patent pending system, I should say,
04:28 that allows a very unique way to control the yaw.
04:31 And I'll tell you a funny story.
04:32 I mean, the first time we tested it,
04:34 we knew it was gonna be powerful and very accurate,
04:36 but one of the engineers was told to,
04:40 "Okay, just hold this in place
04:41 and we're gonna try to measure the force."
04:42 And so he got on a kind of a chair
04:44 and when we kicked it into full power,
04:46 pulled him right off of the,
04:47 pulled him right off of his position
04:49 that he was trying to hold it from.
04:50 Yeah, so it ended up being an extremely efficient way
04:53 to control that critical component, like you were saying.
04:57 - You know, we've got a question from the chat
04:59 and that's why I love doing these.
05:00 They've got a question about what's the weight on batteries
05:03 up for that many engines?
05:06 So any insight on the weight,
05:07 especially 'cause you're trying to make it
05:08 as light and effective as possible.
05:10 - Yeah, well, exactly.
05:11 And so I'll start off by saying most of the aircraft
05:14 in this new advanced air mobility sector that,
05:17 I mean, is growing exponentially 20% plus
05:20 compound annual growth rates,
05:21 but most of them are all electric,
05:23 which means they carry between two
05:24 and 3000 pounds of batteries on board.
05:27 Ours is hybrid electric, so it still uses gas,
05:30 which in a very efficient manner,
05:32 gas still has about 20 times the amount of energy
05:36 per unit mass that even the best batteries do.
05:39 So we leverage that energy source
05:42 in a very efficient manner.
05:44 Instead of carrying thousands of pounds of batteries
05:45 on board, we carry hundreds of pounds of batteries on board.
05:48 - Right.
05:49 - And we're able to carry,
05:50 that's why we're able to carry seven people
05:52 instead of only a couple of people.
05:55 - Now, when it comes to any updates in the pipeline
05:58 that we can talk about, I got a couple more,
05:59 but I wanna talk about the future as well.
06:01 What can potential investors or investors
06:03 that are already within the company,
06:05 what can they kind of expect for what's to come down?
06:08 - So it's gonna be an exciting year or two.
06:11 So within the next few months,
06:14 we'll be completing our flight test program,
06:16 taking our large-scale prototype through transition
06:19 to a full wing-borne flight,
06:21 which honestly, when you scratch the surface
06:23 on a lot of the other companies,
06:24 there's very few, even extremely large market cap companies
06:28 that have actually successfully accomplished that
06:31 on a large-scale prototype.
06:32 So that's pillar number one,
06:33 flight test program through transition,
06:35 which is gonna be very exciting.
06:36 Number two, we're gonna be proving out
06:38 the full-scale underlying technology.
06:41 So one of the core things is our in-wing fan units.
06:45 And so we're producing right now a full-scale version
06:48 of those propulsion units and testing them.
06:50 So we're gonna put it into a test stand
06:52 and we're gonna beat that thing up
06:54 and really figure out how it works
06:57 and we wanna make this aircraft as safe as possible.
07:00 And that means tons and tons and tons of testing.
07:02 - And that's where a part of the R&D budget goes,
07:05 right there, is to break things and figure out,
07:08 again, call me, I will happily get my anger out
07:11 on that.
07:12 I know you've got, I was looking at some notes here,
07:14 'cause you just announced updates
07:16 to your technical flight testing progress as well.
07:19 I'm a visual guy, walk us through some highlights here.
07:22 - Yeah, so I mean, it's that,
07:24 and we put together a really nice video about it,
07:28 but this was from a couple of weeks ago.
07:30 And actually we even did a flight a couple of days ago.
07:33 This is for our forward flight transition flight testing.
07:37 So again, we're taking off the aircraft, doing basic tests,
07:40 and then accelerating and increasing speeds
07:42 all the way up to that critical transition speed,
07:45 where the aircraft can transform back
07:47 to that of a normal airplane.
07:49 And so this video highlights
07:51 some of those pretty cool moments
07:54 that we've had over the last little bit,
07:56 and just shows the stability of the aircraft.
07:59 The fact that we're a real company doing real engineering
08:03 and making awesome progress,
08:04 versus just putting out a bunch of press releases,
08:06 I think is pretty cool.
08:09 - Yeah, no, it's one of those jokes
08:11 where it's like you think a company is doing something,
08:13 but then when you look on Google Maps,
08:15 nothing really happening.
08:16 You know, so I'm happy to kind of see this type of movement
08:19 and that again, that does look really cool.
08:22 Let's talk about in, you know, you have the AI space
08:25 that's been taking off no matter what sector you're in,
08:28 right?
08:29 A lot of people are like,
08:29 "Oh, I could do homework with this and pass my grades."
08:31 But then you have images that are now produced
08:33 and videos that are now produced.
08:35 Do y'all use AI heavily in what you're doing?
08:38 And if not, do you have any plans to,
08:40 or do you feel like that's not yet in the automotive space?
08:43 - Yeah, so one of my pet peeves is that, you know,
08:45 everything is AI these days.
08:46 And so we do use a lot of very advanced algorithms,
08:50 but in terms of true AI,
08:52 we do have a great pathway towards leveraging actual AI.
08:56 So a really good example is now we have a digital twin
08:59 that has a performance very similar to the real aircraft.
09:03 So we've taken real aircraft results,
09:04 we fed it back and we've calibrated our digital twin.
09:07 And now with a million parameters that go into, you know,
09:11 how the aircraft controls itself,
09:14 we're looking into ways where it can fly
09:16 10,000 different mission profiles
09:18 and explore modifying these variables slightly
09:21 in an AI environment, such as the aircraft is safer,
09:24 it is more stable, it is more controllable.
09:27 And then, you know, we come in in the morning
09:29 and it's run its 10,000 mission profiles and it's, you know,
09:32 it says, "Hey, take a look at these variables
09:33 and tweak them a little bit."
09:34 That works in the simulated environment.
09:37 And in such a manner, we can have a good idea
09:40 of what to tweak for the full-scale aircraft.
09:43 - Yeah, well, look, last question for me,
09:45 and I'll let you go.
09:47 Tesla has been in the news talking about full, you know,
09:50 FSD, nobody's in the seat, but the car is moving.
09:54 What are your thoughts on that translating to flight, right?
09:57 Do you feel like we will be in a world in our lifetime
10:01 where you won't need a pilot
10:03 and that you will just be able to be transported
10:06 from A to B, thanks to AI, computer,
10:09 whatever you want to call it?
10:11 - It's another great question, actually.
10:13 There's a great quote there.
10:14 I mean, humans always overestimate what they can do
10:16 in five years and underestimate what they can do
10:18 in kind of 10 years.
10:19 In the next five years, I don't see it happening personally.
10:21 I mean, to be frank, on the commercial side,
10:25 aircraft have been able to pretty much
10:28 autonomously fly themselves.
10:30 I mean, any commercial airliner that you get into
10:32 now almost has the ability to fly an approach,
10:35 flare, land, and stop in the middle of the runway.
10:37 So I mean, it's pretty autonomous.
10:39 Even given all of that,
10:40 they still haven't removed the pilot from the cockpit.
10:42 - Yeah. - And that's because,
10:44 you know, I'm- - And they have two of them.
10:46 - Yeah, I know, exactly.
10:46 I was a CF-18 fighter pilot for 20 years.
10:50 And the thing with the air environment
10:52 is that there's always,
10:53 it's a very complicated environment
10:55 and there's always things that pop up
10:56 and it's nice to have a human that's right there,
10:58 that's in the loop, that can make those
11:00 very complicated decisions when lives matter.
11:03 And I see that as the future in the short to medium term.
11:06 Now, in the long term,
11:07 it might be very normal for us to just,
11:10 you know, jump into an air taxi.
11:12 And, you know, the cool thing about the air environment
11:15 is it's that third dimension.
11:16 And now you can stack, you know,
11:18 aircraft in different altitudes
11:19 and it ostensibly is much safer than driving,
11:22 you know, like 100 kilometers an hour
11:24 or you can pass another car, you know,
11:26 with 20 feet separation. - Yes, 100%.
11:28 - So I'm excited about that future.
11:30 But for the, you know, for the short to medium term,
11:32 Risen Aircraft is definitely focused on piloted aircraft.
11:35 We think that's where customers
11:37 are gonna be the most comfortable initially,
11:38 at least for the next little bit.
11:40 And I think that's, you know, that's the way.
11:42 The cool thing is all of the sensors on board this airplane
11:45 and all of the fly-by-wire type flight controls,
11:48 they're already set up for that transition
11:51 to autonomous flying. - Okay.
11:54 - When, you know, customers are comfortable,
11:56 when the technology allows, when the environment allows.
11:59 And, but in the meantime, we're gonna have a pilot.
12:02 - Yeah, I mean, I've taken a Discovery flight
12:05 three years ago 'cause I wanted to get into this.
12:06 'Cause I grew up wanting to be a pilot,
12:08 got flight simulator,
12:09 then I said that's way too many buttons
12:11 and I stopped pursuing that goal.
12:13 And then, you know, COVID hit and I was like,
12:15 "All right, what am I gonna do with my life?"
12:16 And then so I decided to take a Discovery flight,
12:18 but I was like, "Nah, this is scary."
12:20 So point being, even as a consumer--
12:22 - You'd be great at it.
12:23 I spent a lot of time in the Air Force training pilots.
12:25 I think you'd be great at it, man.
12:27 Honestly, you can do it. - I appreciate,
12:28 again, I'm telling you what,
12:30 next time we do this, my people will talk to your people
12:33 and we'll figure out a way to do this interview
12:35 in front of your flight.
12:36 And then maybe we'll take a flight.
12:38 If my producer wants to join me,
12:39 that's the risk that, you know, they'll have to take.
12:41 But any final thoughts from me before I let you go, man?
12:43 - Well, and in that flight, we'll hand you the controls
12:45 and you get to fly it around.
12:47 - Just don't do what I did to my niece
12:49 and I like give her a controller that's not plugged in.
12:50 So she thinks she's playing,
12:51 but she's not controlling anything.
12:52 Just don't do me that dirty.
12:54 But give me your final thoughts, Magus.
12:56 I know you gotta get going.
12:57 - Yeah, so no, we're just really excited
12:59 to make a lot of progress in a very short period of time.
13:02 Here we're building a real world machine
13:04 that is gonna improve the lives of a lot of folks
13:06 in the short to medium term.
13:07 So really appreciate this opportunity, Zined.
13:09 Thanks for having us on again and letting us tell our story.
13:12 (upbeat music)
13:14 (upbeat music)