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Music Star Will-i-am Latest Celebrity to Invest in Green Aviation Revolution

Will-i-am, best known as an Amer­i­can rap­per, song­writer, actor and record pro­duc­er who found­ed hip hop group the Black Eyed Peas in 1995 has been entranced by the delights of per­son­al fly­ing vehi­cle com­pa­ny Jet­son. It has been announced the singer has invest­ed an undis­closed large amount of mon­ey in to the com­pa­ny as part of a recent USD15 mil­lion seed financ­ing round. Accord­ing to the com­pa­ny, the rap­per has been offered the first Jet­son One off the assem­bly line and will become one of the company’s first pilots after com­plet­ing the train­ing course.

The 48 year-old singer enthused, “I’m proud to be a part of the Jet­son fam­i­ly and sup­port the company’s mis­sion to democ­ra­tise flight, open­ing the skies to all. Per­son­al air­craft are ide­al for short point-to-point flights and will soon be a real­i­ty.”

The eclec­tic Will.i.am has also designed and man­u­fac­tured futur­is­tic-look­ing cus­tom cars, work­ing along­side com­pa­nies like Mer­cedes-Benz and DeLore­an. So, the Jet­son One is right up his hip hop alley.

evtolinsights.com reg­u­lar­ly cov­ers the com­pa­ny. The Swedish-based Jet­son is pio­neer­ing the per­son­al fly­ing vehi­cle mar­ket, hav­ing already pre-sold more than 300 air­craft at a price start­ing at USD98,000. A sale first requires an USD8,000 down pay­ment to secure a ser­i­al num­ber.

One can clear­ly see that the wealthy and glob­al elites will come swarm­ing around Jet­son like bees to a hon­ey-pot, once the air­craft is ful­ly cer­ti­fied and ready to sell next year on the com­mer­cial mar­ket. It will be a major and lat­est go-to play­thing for those own­ing large tracts of pri­vate land.

A pilot’s licence is not required and it is easy to fly. Cat­e­gorised as an ultra­light air­craft, the Jet­son is con­trolled by just two joy­sticks. One for fly­ing up and down and the oth­er, left or right, while the in-flight com­put­er pro­vides a safe­ty mech­a­nism if the air­craft los­es pow­er, auto­mat­i­cal­ly land­ing it for the pilot. Even the train­ing course is straight­for­ward and quick to com­plete. The vehi­cle is only one metre wide, so you can fit it in the back of a large SUV, van or truck.

The Jet­son is not allowed to go faster than 63 miles per hour and no high­er than 1,500 feet off the ground. It has a fly­ing bat­tery charge time of around 20 min­utes, lead­ing to a poten­tial flight range of 21 miles.

Per­son­al fly­ing vehi­cles is a very pop­u­lar spe­cial­ist mar­ket in the mak­ing. 

Already, the Jet­son One is attract­ing increas­ing pub­lic­i­ty giv­en the launch date is less than a year away. One ear­ly exam­ple being an acco­lade from U.S late-night TV show host, come­di­an Stephen Col­bert.

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Mean­while, the company’s var­i­ous videos of the Jet­son in flight, post­ed on social media, have attract­ed well over 50 mil­lion views.

Jet­son oper­ates a state-of-the-art research and pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in Arez­zo, Tus­cany. The facil­i­ty includes a pri­vate air­field south of Flo­rence, hous­ing an indus­tri­al com­plex, an 800-metre airstrip for dai­ly flight test­ing, a cus­tomer expe­ri­ence cen­tre, and a pilot school. Look­ing ahead, Jet­son plans to expand its oper­a­tions in to the U.S mar­ket in 2024, with mul­ti­ple loca­tions under con­sid­er­a­tion for its future Amer­i­can head­quar­ters. Cur­rent­ly, it is based in Palo Alto, Cal­i­for­nia.

Yet, it is not just the per­son­al fly­ing vehi­cle mar­ket that is attract­ing celebri­ties. Both the fly­ing taxi and drone indus­tries are also cre­at­ing a stir.

Take the Chi­nese AAV com­pa­ny EHang, for exam­ple. Recent­ly, Lee Soo Man, a well-known South Kore­an music pro­duc­er and founder of media com­pa­ny SM Enter­tain­ment was part of a busi­ness group invest­ing USD23 mil­lion as a pri­vate place­ment. Some describe him as an Asian equiv­a­lent of Simon Cow­ell, the cre­ator of the X Fac­tor and Got Tal­ent TV shows.

Lee Soo Man (Cred­it: SM Enter­tain­ment)

In a state­ment, Lee com­ment­ed, “I look for­ward to the con­ver­gence of cut­ting-edge trans­porta­tion tech­nolo­gies and pop­u­lar cul­ture to cre­ate sus­tain­able val­ue, and I’m proud to be part of it. As the first mover and a lead­ing inno­va­tor with great poten­tial in the emerg­ing urban air mobil­i­ty indus­try, I appre­ci­ate EHang’s unwa­ver­ing ded­i­ca­tion to enabling safe, autonomous and eco-friend­ly air mobil­i­ty for the gen­er­al pub­lic.”

Lee’s inter­est began after set­ting up LeeP­ol­lux to explore using drones in visu­al enter­tain­ment pro­duc­tions. While he is no longer part of this project, he remains a big name in K‑pop and is an impor­tant social media influ­encer.

And let us not for­get the drone indus­try and lead­ing India-based com­pa­ny, Garu­da Aero­space, who has embraced the invest­ment and sup­port from one of the world’s great­est crick­eters — the liv­ing leg­end MS Dhoni.

Cap­tain of the Indi­an short-for­mat side for 10 years, he now cap­tains the IPL fran­chise team, Chen­nai Super Kings which has won the IPL tour­na­ment five times since its inau­gu­ra­tion in 2008. Along­side fel­low Indi­an Virat Kohli, 42 year-old Dhoni, remains the most famous and best known crick­eter in Asia.

Back in June of last year, news broke that he had invest­ed an undis­closed large sum of mon­ey in to Garu­da.  He was quot­ed, “I’m hap­py to be a part of the com­pa­ny and look for­ward to wit­ness their growth sto­ry with the unique drone solu­tions they have to offer.”

Mean­while, for Agnish­war Jayaprakash, founder and CEO of Garu­da, it was a dream come true for a crick­et­ing God to become a part of his com­pa­ny. He incred­u­lous­ly enthused, “He is the epit­o­me of ded­i­ca­tion and I firm­ly believe that hav­ing Cap­tain Cool on our cap table adds tremen­dous val­ue, which will moti­vate our team to per­form bet­ter.”

MS Dhoni (Cred­it: Garu­da)

And just to add to this hul­la­baloo, Dhoni also agreed to become a brand ambas­sador for Garu­da ele­vat­ing the company’s pro­file from low key to stratos­pher­ic.

We may soon see every Tom, Dick and Har­ry celebri­ty, social media influ­encer, and even Princes and Princess­es come flock­ing to the coolest new avi­a­tion rev­o­lu­tion since the Wright Broth­ers first flew the Wright Fly­er in 1903 at Kit­ty Hawk, South Car­oli­na. For this new indus­try ticks every con­ceiv­able 21st cen­tu­ry green box and may soon become a marketeer’s delight.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.jetsonaero.com/

https://www.ehang.com/

https://www.garudaaerospace.com/

(News Source: www.venturebeat.com)

(Top image: From left to right, Peter H. Dia­man­dis, Advi­sor, Tomasz Patan, co-founder and CTO, will.i.am investor, and Rikard Steiber Board Advi­sor after clos­ing the Jet­son invest­ment — Cred­it: Jet­son) 

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