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Airspeeder strengthens global team with addition of aviation, aerospace, eVTOL and motorsport experts

Air­speed­er has made four key appoint­ments in its glob­al tech­ni­cal, engi­neer­ing and sports rights lead­er­ship teams, bring­ing in expe­ri­ence from some of the biggest firms in the aero­space, avi­a­tion, eVTOL and motor­sport mar­kets.

The com­pa­ny is cre­at­ing the world’s first rac­ing series for manned fly­ing elec­tric cars and recent­ly com­plet­ed the devel­op­ment pro­gramme of its Air­speer Mk3. Prepa­ra­tions are already being made for the next phase and the first remote­ly pilot­ed races, set to take place in 2021.

Judith Grig­gs joins as Glob­al Rights Acqui­si­tion and Man­age­ment Lead, with her legal and com­mer­cial back­ground span­ning more than 27 years in For­mu­la 1® — includ­ing serv­ing as CEO of the Aus­tralian Grand Prix Cor­po­ra­tion in Mel­bourne. That work estab­lished the race as a piv­otal round for the sport and earned Judith the hon­our of Aus­tralian busi­ness­woman of the year for that role.

She will apply her expe­ri­ence shap­ing the com­mer­cial­i­ty and glob­al view­er­ship of F1 to realise the glob­al poten­tial of elec­tric fly­ing car rac­ing. Addi­tion­al­ly, Judith will work with Air­speed­er founder and CEO Matt Pear­son and CCO Jack With­in­shaw, in build­ing com­mer­cial rela­tion­ships and nego­ti­at­ing with host nations, cities and brands in addi­tion to those already estab­lished with DHL, mon­ey man­age­ment leader, EQUALS and cyber-secu­ri­ty pio­neer Acro­nis and their deliv­ery part­ner Teknov8.  

Grig­gs said: “The oppor­tu­ni­ty to help Air­speed­er and Alau­da shape the world’s first rac­ing series for fly­ing elec­tric cars is irre­sistible. Air­speed­er has the poten­tial to be the most pro­gres­sive and excit­ing new enti­ty in sport. It is rac­ing with glob­al vision and authen­tic tech­ni­cal pur­pose and I am excit­ed to work with Matt and the team to deliv­er on this poten­tial through build­ing excep­tion­al rela­tion­ships with com­mer­cial enti­ties and rac­ing bod­ies.”

Brett Hill will lead the engi­neer­ing pro­gramme for both the Mk3 and Mk4 Air­speed­er craft as Tech­ni­cal Project Man­ag­er and joins from Boe­ing, where he led tech­ni­cal projects and engi­neer­ing teams on the 747–8, 787 and var­i­ous mil­i­tary pro­grammes. Across his career at Boe­ing, Brett worked in not only design and analy­sis, but advanced pro­duc­tion, and will bring a par­tic­u­lar focus on ‘design for man­u­fac­ture’ to the Air­speed­er pro­grammes. 

Matt Rodgers comes from Ver­ti­cal Aero­space and joins as Head of Com­pos­ites. He also brings senior tech­ni­cal motor­sport lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence from Williams Rac­ing, Renault F1 and For­mu­la E. At Air­speed­er, he will lead all aspects of com­pos­ite design for the craft’s mono­coque struc­tur­al chas­sis. This will include build­ing a glob­al net­work of cut­ting-edge man­u­fac­tur­ing part­ners and build­ing a team of high­ly skilled tech­ni­cians as part of the estab­lish­ment of a UK man­u­fac­tur­ing foot­print.

Matt will also take a lead in explor­ing nat­ur­al fibre alter­na­tives to fur­ther reduce resource con­sump­tion. 

And final­ly, David Ware­ing adds a wealth of expe­ri­ence from hyper-per­for­mance and lux­u­ry auto­mo­tive mar­ques and through the devel­op­ment of rac­ing tech­nol­o­gy at Tom Walkin­shaw Rac­ing (TWR) and hyper­car vehi­cle sys­tems at McLaren. 

Join­ing as Sys­tems Engi­neer, Ware­ing has devel­oped a sys­tems-based approach to pow­er­train devel­op­ment sup­port­ing a mul­ti-lay­er redun­dant archi­tec­ture that max­imis­es per­for­mance and avail­abil­i­ty though the effi­cient deploy­ment of pow­er sup­plies, con­trols and propul­sion sys­tems. His exten­sive expe­ri­ence from rac­ing and per­for­mance car engi­neer­ing brings sig­nif­i­cant knowhow in using mod­el­ling and sim­u­la­tion work to achieve tech­ni­cal objec­tives of deliv­ery high-per­for­mance with safe­ty.

Com­ment­ing on the new appoint­ments, Pear­son said: “Our vision is to accel­er­ate a mobil­i­ty rev­o­lu­tion through intense and safe sport­ing com­pe­ti­tion. We know that true inno­va­tion requires the world’s best tal­ent to deliv­er. Attract­ing excep­tion­al minds drawn from the very high­est lev­els of motorac­ing, auto­mo­tive engi­neer­ing, aero­space and the rapid­ly emerg­ing eVTOL space will add to an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly capa­ble team of senior engi­neers and tech­ni­cal experts that have just deliv­ered the world’s first ful­ly-func­tion­al remote­ly pilot­ed elec­tric fly­ing rac­ing car.

“This injec­tion of tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial capa­bil­i­ty will play a piv­otal role as we build towards his­toric first un-crewed races in 2021 and the world’s first crewed elec­tric fly­ing car GPs in the years to fol­low.” 

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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