Q&A: Brandon Robinson of Horizon Aircraft talks about its aircraft technology and exciting plans for the future

We’re now see­ing new eVTOL air­craft devel­op­ers enter this emerg­ing space with some incred­i­ble designs. Among them is Cana­di­an aero­space com­pa­ny Hori­zon Air­craft, which is cur­rent­ly build­ing its hybrid-pow­ered eVTOL air­craft, the Cavorite X5.

Designed to car­ry four pas­sen­gers and a pilot, it will have a max cruise of 350km/h and a range of more than 500km. The Cavorite X5 also has a patent-pend­ing wing sys­tem which will enable high­ly effi­cient oper­a­tional flight.

A fly­ing 1:6 scale test pro­to­type is cur­rent­ly in devel­op­ment, while a full-scale pro­to­type design is 40 per cent com­plete. The com­pa­ny plans to have this com­plet­ed and fly­ing with­in two years.

To get more details about the com­pa­ny’s back­ground and vision for its air­craft, we spoke to Hori­zon Air­craft’s Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer and Co-Founder, Bran­don Robin­son, in more detail.

Q: Bran­don, I under­stand you’re a retired CF-18 Fight­er Pilot and Hori­zon Air­craft was start­ed by you and your father Bri­an?

Bran­don Robin­son: “Yes, I was for­tu­nate enough to have a long career in the RCAF where I flew jets, and Hori­zon Air­craft is a real­ly cool sto­ry about my father and I work­ing togeth­er to ush­er in the next gen­er­a­tion of air­craft design. 

“Towards the end of my career in the RCAF I had fin­ished an MBA and was very inter­est­ed in busi­ness and engi­neer­ing. My father owned a high-tech cus­tom aero­space engi­neer­ing shop that focused on com­plex mod­i­fi­ca­tion for gen­er­al avi­a­tion cus­tomers so I began to see if there was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to help out. 

“My father is a tru­ly excep­tion­al engi­neer whose work became increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar in the mar­ket­place. He spe­cial­ized in dif­fi­cult mod­i­fi­ca­tions and com­plex engi­neer­ing that oth­ers could not eas­i­ly accom­plish. Close to 2013 there was a gen­tle­man with the vision of a com­plete­ly new type of air­craft that was based on our fam­i­ly plane — an RC‑3 Repub­lic Seabee that he and my grand­fa­ther built from scrap! 

“My father had always been inter­est­ed in elec­tri­fi­ca­tion — using small­er, lighter and more reli­able elec­tric com­po­nents in many of his projects. He had the idea to design his new pro­to­type air­craft around a hybrid-elec­tric pow­er sys­tem. 

“I realised the project would need addi­tion­al financ­ing, mar­ket­ing struc­ture and essen­tial­ly a larg­er busi­ness struc­ture so I entered the pic­ture to help where I could and that’s when Hori­zon Air­craft was born.”

Q: That’s great to hear the sto­ry about your father and grand­fa­ther. Do you think the long­stand­ing knowl­edge and exper­tise Bri­an has gained, along with your busi­ness back­ground, gives you a good stand­point in this indus­try?

BR: “I think one of the keys to suc­cess for us has been that first of all, we’re very oper­a­tional­ly-focused. I come from a back­ground where plan­ning and oper­a­tional con­text is every­thing. The mis­sion always comes first. Then we decide how we can go about accom­plish­ing this mis­sion with­in the var­i­ous real-world con­straints that exist. We had the same approach with design­ing our Cavorite X5 eVTOL. 

“So, we con­sid­er bad weath­er, strong winds, unex­pect­ed require­ments to divert to an alter­nate land­ing area. A deep under­stand­ing of the oper­a­tional envi­ron­ment is crit­i­cal to design­ing a machine that will func­tion prop­er­ly with­in it.

“The sec­ond key thing dri­ving our suc­cess is my father’s tech­ni­cal skills and prac­ti­cal approach. He has been fly­ing air­craft since he was 14-years-old and has many thou­sands of flight hours, so he under­stands the mis­sion. He also under­stands man­u­fac­tur­ing, so design­ing a machine that can be effi­cient­ly built has real­ly helped to con­trol costs.

“And as hard as we looked at it, we could not come up with a pure elec­tric solu­tion that made sense in the short to medi­um term. Longer term, sure — and our hybrid archi­tec­ture is eas­i­ly con­vert­ed to pure elec­tric when sci­ence catch­es up. But we want­ed to design a machine that works tomor­row, would be safe, tough and lever­age the eVTOL capa­bil­i­ty to fur­ther broad­en its capa­bil­i­ties.”

Q: The Cavorite X5 looks incred­i­ble. Are you able to tell us more about it and where you think it can fit into the grow­ing ecosys­tem?

BR: “The first thing you need to know is that it is the result of an evo­lu­tion. We start­ed with our pre­vi­ous X3 pro­to­type — this ver­sion had many patents and it was designed for air car­go, mede­vac, and dis­as­ter relief mis­sions. 

“When we start­ed inves­ti­gat­ing ways to increase oper­a­tional flex­i­bil­i­ty and util­i­ty even fur­ther, we start­ed talk­ing about the emerg­ing eVTOL pos­si­bil­i­ties and what a dis­trib­uted elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem might unlock. We had many dif­fer­ent con­cepts and were try­ing to fig­ure out from a mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing and aero­space per­spec­tive, what made the most sense. 

“The first thing that jumped out is these machines will need a usable range. Even if you’re design­ing a vehi­cle that will go 50km from build­ing A to build­ing B intra-city, it can’t arrive there with five per cent bat­tery pow­er.

“A machine that will do use­ful work over 50km will prob­a­bly have a max range on the order of 100km or more, because it must get to its des­ti­na­tion, per­haps fac­ing un-fore­cast­ed head­winds, maybe divert­ing around bad weath­er, and then be able to abort a land­ing and head to an alter­nate land­ing area. This requires a lot of ener­gy — more than many pure­ly elec­tric designs will be able to prac­ti­cal­ly han­dle.

“The sec­ond thing that popped out was that wind­borne lift remains the most effi­cient way to fly. There are some amaz­ing­ly com­plex designs emerg­ing, but the only real use­ful way to recov­er the ener­gy expend­ed dur­ing the inef­fi­cient ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing por­tion is to return to a wing-borne flight for the max­i­mum time pos­si­ble. 

“Those two fac­tors com­bined to pro­duce a unique con­cept and led to our patent-pend­ing dis­trib­uted lift sys­tem. Our sys­tem allows lift off ver­ti­cal­ly and then tran­si­tion to for­ward flight as soon as pos­si­ble. The wing cov­ers then close and you have an air­craft that flies like a nor­mal air­plane for 99 per cent of the mis­sion.”

Q: This also goes along­side the idea of pub­lic accep­tance too. Do you think the mechan­ics of the Cavorite X5 will help reduce the stig­ma asso­ci­at­ed with those who might be against trav­el­ling in an eVTOL air­craft?

BR: “From a safe­ty per­spec­tive, this is a nor­mal air­craft that has an addi­tion­al lay­er of safe­ty built into it. So if the pilot goes too slow or has to go in and out of ver­ti­port, they can do so because the wings open up and it turns into a heli­copter that can stop in mid-air and then land and reverse. Also, as an injured patient, get­ting to the hos­pi­tal twice as fast as in a heli­copter is nev­er a bad thing!

“From a reg­u­la­to­ry struc­ture, it also makes a lot of sense. The Cavorite X5 is fun­da­men­tal­ly a nor­mal air­craft with an addi­tion­al eVTOL capa­bil­i­ty. This helps shape dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and speaks to sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er­ing the risk dur­ing this process.”

Q: You’ve recent­ly come out of stealth mode, but what can you tell me about devel­op­ments? Do you have a pro­ject­ed time­line or roadmap that you’re work­ing to?

BR: “We have a sub-scale pro­to­type that will fly short­ly. It will begin test­ing with­in the next two months, so we will have some great data by the end of March.”

Q: Com­ing out of stealth mode has also come at the right time, giv­en the momen­tum seen in Cana­da and the work of gov­ern­ment agen­cies to help bring this new era of avi­a­tion to life.

BR: “It is great and the sup­port of the gov­ern­ment is there. There are some real­ly for­ward-look­ing indi­vid­u­als who have put togeth­er CAAM [Cana­di­an Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Con­sor­tium] and NEXA Cap­i­tal Part­ners and there are a lot of folk doing some fan­tas­tic work which is inspir­ing. 

“We have also been lucky enough to team up with the Peter­bor­ough Inno­va­tion Clus­ter — under the lead­er­ship of John Gillis and Mike Skin­ner — and they have been incred­i­bly help­ful with telling our sto­ry and con­nect­ing us with use­ful resources. These types of ini­tia­tives are crit­i­cal to incu­bate Cana­di­an inno­va­tion and this is some­thing we’ve expe­ri­enced first-hand.”

Q: We see a lot of new part­ner­ships form­ing between com­pa­nies in this mar­ket. Is this some­thing that Hori­zon Air­craft will be look­ing to explore as well?

BR: “Absolute­ly. We’re putting togeth­er a seed series financ­ing round that is going to close at the end of March and we have lots of inter­est for that which will help us get through to the 50 per cent scale pro­to­type, so we’ll have a large scale fly­ing demon­stra­tor with­in a year from close.”

Q: You’ve said the Cavorite X5 won’t just be for air taxi ser­vices, but for oth­er use cas­es too. How impor­tant do you think it is to have this kind of tech­nol­o­gy made acces­si­ble to as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, and not just the rich and wealthy?

BR: “That’s a real­ly good point and I think it comes down to fun­da­men­tal­ly sound busi­ness cas­es. Pro­duc­tion at vol­ume is key to help dri­ve down costs and make it acces­si­ble for every­body. Wide adop­tion is also key to help com­bat the grow­ing pol­lu­tion prob­lem, with more than 750 mil­lion tons of CO2 equiv­a­lent pro­duced by traf­fic con­ges­tion. 

“But again, the key is devel­op­ing an air­craft that is sup­port­ed by sound busi­ness and oper­a­tional fun­da­men­tals. There  is lit­tle doubt the future of urban and even region­al trav­el will opti­mise use of the third dimen­sion. Elec­tric air-taxis will be a huge part of this and will democ­ra­tise effi­cient trav­el. And it’s great that the result will also be a much more envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble way to move peo­ple around.”

Q: Do you have a tar­get year of when you hope to be oper­a­tional?

BR: “We’ll have a func­tion­al sub­scale pro­to­type in 2022, where we’ll be well on our way to the full-scale ver­sion. We will go into low-vol­ume pro­duc­tion in around 2024.”

Q: Are you able to dis­close how many air­craft you would hope to roll out each year, based on the idea of going into low-vol­ume pro­duc­tion?

BR: “Build­ing your own machine will teach you a lot about how it’s built and some of the flaws in it, so there’s a process through low-vol­ume pro­duc­tion that’s real­ly refin­ing the prod­uct so it can be pro­duced at scale with as low a cost as pos­si­ble.

“A lot of CEOs would sit in front of you and say we’re basi­cal­ly going to build up an OEM from scratch and go into high-vol­ume pro­duc­tion, so by 2027 we’ll be sell­ing thou­sands of these things. I think that’s the wrong approach. 

“These com­pa­nies build their teams to 500 peo­ple before they have a ful­ly-refined pro­to­type, try to set up high vol­ume man­u­fac­tur­ing with mas­sive new facil­i­ties and also tack­le the reg­u­la­to­ry hur­dles all at the same time. This dilu­tion of focus can be crip­pling. 

“So the team has dis­cussed this quite a bit from a strate­gic per­spec­tive. We’ll remain focused on pro­duc­ing an amaz­ing machine, and devel­op part­ner­ships that have the exper­tise to help us ver­sus try to bring every­thing in-house.”

Q: A lot of talk in the indus­try is the tran­si­tion from pilot­ed oper­a­tions to auton­o­my. Is that some­thing you’ve thought about with your air­craft at Hori­zon?

BR: “Yes, absolute­ly. We like to be real­is­tic and prag­mat­ic when it comes to autonomous oper­a­tions. While the ini­tial flight test­ing and archi­tec­ture is all like­ly to have a sig­nif­i­cant pilot com­po­nent to it, the small­er-scale pro­to­types will nec­es­sar­i­ly have a high degree of auton­o­my.”

Q: Is there any­thing else you’d like to add about Hori­zon Air­craft that you’ve not men­tioned?

BR: “I would like to reit­er­ate that we have a team who has designed, built and test­ed brand new air­craft from scratch. This is an excep­tion­al group with a track record of inno­va­tion and suc­cess, and sup­port­ed by an increas­ing­ly broad net­work that reach­es across North Amer­i­ca. Our Cavorite X5 eVTOL will be safe, effi­cient, and will be prac­ti­cal­ly usable across a broad spec­trum of mis­sions.”