Hyundai Motor Group appoints J. Scott Drennan to its Urban Air Mobility Division

Hyundai Motor Group has appoint­ed J. Scott Dren­nan as Vice Pres­i­dent of its Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) Divi­sion. 

Report­ing to Jai­won Shin, Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent (EVP) and Head of UAM Divi­sion, Dren­nan will lead UAM research and devel­op­ment and holds a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Aero­space Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land, and a Mas­ters of Lib­er­al Arts from South­ern Methodist Uni­ver­si­ty. 

Pri­or to join­ing Hyundai, Dren­nan spent more than 25 years with Bell Tex­tron, most recent­ly as Vice Pres­i­dent of Inno­va­tion, and made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the V‑22, the AW609 and the V‑280, all ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (VTOL) air­craft. 

He said: “I am hon­oured to con­tribute to Hyundai’s vision of future mobil­i­ty. Since my child­hood, I have dreamed of team­ing with fel­low engi­neers and design­ers to devel­op tech­no­log­i­cal mar­vels. EVP Shin and the Hyundai Motor Group have giv­en me the oppor­tu­ni­ty and great respon­si­bil­i­ty to do just that. 

“In our dai­ly lives, we lose too much pre­cious time in traf­fic con­ges­tion. I want to give that time back to peo­ple through safe, acces­si­ble and sus­tain­able ver­ti­cal mobil­i­ty.”

Dren­nan start­ed his career as an engi­neer in 1990 as a co-op stu­dent with GE Air­craft Engines. Since then, he held var­i­ous posi­tions of increas­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty in engi­neer­ing and pro­gramme man­age­ment. 

He was a func­tion­al direc­tor of air vehi­cle inte­gra­tion and a pro­gram man­ag­er and chief engi­neer on the AW609 com­mer­cial tilt-rotor pro­gramme. His expe­ri­ence includes applied research, new air­craft devel­op­ment, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and engi­neer­ing sup­port to exper­i­men­tal and pro­duc­tion man­u­fac­tur­ing. 

Shin said: “We are for­tu­nate to have Scott join our UAM Divi­sion. I’ve had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to col­lab­o­rate with Scott close­ly in the past and found him not only superb in his tech­ni­cal knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence but also excel­lent in lead­ing peo­ple. 

“Lever­ag­ing his vast expe­ri­ence in the VTOL and UAM fields, Scott will lead the engi­neer­ing devel­op­ment to turn our vision of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty into a real­i­ty, trans­form­ing our lifestyles for many decades to come.”