INTERVIEW: Clive Hawkins of ARIA Group on building up a manufacturing mindset to scale up future AAM fleets

By work­ing with AAM com­pa­nies, Clive came up with a vision to align the exper­tise of ARIA Group, Pan­kl and KTM tech­nolo­gies to bring the col­lec­tive exper­tise from auto­mo­tive and aero­space to the new indus­try.

Based in Irvine, Cal­i­for­nia, this vision is called CO-LEKTIV. Its mem­bers apply their com­bined exper­tise to help the world’s lead­ing brands build the scal­able Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty fleets that will enable a trans­porta­tion trans­for­ma­tion. 

The exper­tise and insights of CO-LEKTIV will unlock a viable trans­porta­tion ecosys­tem that is trans­for­ma­tive for all soci­ety and our plan­et. So Clive, thank you so much for join­ing me on the eVTOL insights pod­cast.

Q: Could you start off by telling our audi­ence then a lit­tle bit more about your career to date, the his­to­ry of ARIA Group and also what led you to launch CO-LEKTIV?

I start­ed my career in the auto­mo­tive indus­try as an engi­neer work­ing in that space and then I found­ed ARIA Group in Cal­i­for­nia in 1995. Our pri­ma­ry mis­sion was to help man­u­fac­tur­ers in the auto­mo­tive indus­try devel­op their prod­ucts. 

And over the years, we spread our exper­tise into more ground-based indus­tries; it was always about trans­porta­tion and mov­ing peo­ple. That was our exper­tise then and that is our exper­tise to this day. Then about 15 years ago, ARIA ven­tured into the aero­space indus­try. So we have helped hun­dreds of com­pa­nies at this point devel­op inter­est­ing new and nov­el prod­ucts. 

We ini­tial­ly start­ed our work and got into aero­space through Hon­da, who was and still is a big cus­tomer of ours. They asked us to help them with some of the aspects of devel­op­ing the air­craft. It wasn’t what we ini­tial­ly planned to do, but they asked us to help and we’ve now end­ed up help­ing many, many com­pa­nies.

About sev­en or eight years ago, we were already work­ing with Uber on its ground-based prod­ucts and we had a real­ly good rela­tion­ship with them. When they issued a white paper on the poten­tial of eVTOL air­craft as part of the Uber Group, we imme­di­ate­ly start­ed work­ing with them on devel­op­ment of these types of vehi­cles. We were strong believ­ers in the promise of what it could bring, so were excit­ed about the oppor­tu­ni­ty. We had tons of expe­ri­ence in trans­porta­tion and thought this was a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring in some of our aero­space knowl­edge and knowl­edge of ground-based vehi­cles and mash it all togeth­er. 

We’ve worked with many com­pa­nies in the AAM space and about three years ago, we real­ly eval­u­at­ed the promise of these new types of dis­rup­tive air­craft. If this indus­try is real­ly going to deliv­er on the promise, the air­craft are going to have to be man­u­fac­tured dif­fer­ent­ly and in dif­fer­ent vol­umes to what tra­di­tion­al aero­space is doing. We need peo­ple who have some aero­space back­ground, but who also have free­dom to think dif­fer­ent­ly and bring some new ideas and inno­va­tion on how to bring these air­craft to real­i­ty and not just con­cepts.”

Can you tell us more about the oth­er com­pa­nies with­in the CO-LEKTIV brand? 

It’s eas­i­est for me to start with ARIA. We’ve been involved in devel­op­ing these con­cepts from the very ear­ly stages, or ini­tial sketch, and help­ing to realise them into phys­i­cal prod­ucts and engi­neer them into what they real­ly do. 

We also have a very long his­to­ry in com­pos­ite man­u­fac­tur­ing. We were and still are help­ing com­pa­nies at the very ear­ly phas­es of their devel­op­ment, with a focus on engi­neer­ing to be able to man­u­fac­ture these vehi­cles. The tra­di­tion­al aero­space man­u­fac­tur­ing is real­ly going to strug­gle to meet any of the vol­umes a lot of these com­pa­nies are antic­i­pat­ing or will need to be suc­cess­ful long term in the mar­ket. 

PANKL is very inter­est­ing. It man­u­fac­tures real­ly high per­for­mance metal­lic parts and some com­pos­ite parts, with the com­pa­ny already hav­ing an aero­space divi­sion which makes com­po­nents for most­ly Black­hawk heli­copters and has done so for many years. So they’ve got aero­space knowl­edge, but are prob­a­bly most known for being a sup­pli­er for the For­mu­la One indus­try. An inter­est­ing way of think­ing about advanced engi­neer­ing, with one foot in aero­space and the oth­er in real­ly advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing. PANKL would be a great part­ner for any of the metal­lic, 3D print­ed, tita­ni­um and com­pli­cat­ed new man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nolo­gies that could sup­port the indus­try. 

From a com­pos­ite side, KTM is most well known for its motor­cy­cle busi­ness and spe­cialise in man­u­fac­tur­ing high per­for­mance prod­ucts. There is a group with­in KTM that’s the kind of stunt works group called E Tech­nolo­gies. They real­ly focus on how to take real­ly advanced engi­neer­ing and design ideas and devel­op them into some­thing that could be man­u­fac­tured in vol­umes of 1,000; the kind of vol­umes that this aero­space indus­try is going to need. So they seem like these real­ly good com­pa­nies which could work togeth­er and think inside the box and out­side the box at the same time.

Q: Can you share your thoughts on the man­u­fac­tur­ing side of the indus­try at present? 

We focus most­ly on the air­frame type activ­i­ties and the struc­tur­al part of the air­craft, but I think the AAM indus­try has realised com­pos­ites and car­bon fibre mate­ri­als are going to be nec­es­sary because of the per­for­mance and light­weight nature. 

Being able to man­u­fac­ture com­pos­ites at high­er vol­umes, and I’m talk­ing thou­sands instead of tens or hun­dreds, is com­plex and dif­fi­cult. It adds a whole addi­tion­al lev­el of com­plex­i­ty when it has to meet the reg­u­la­to­ry stan­dards and require­ments of avi­a­tion. 

That means that you have to come up with process­es and mate­ri­als that are cer­ti­fi­able to the avi­a­tion indus­try and those aren’t as advanced as you might think. Aero­space is quite slow and method­i­cal for safe­ty rea­sons, so com­pos­ite man­u­fac­tur­ing needs to have quite a fair­ly large rev­o­lu­tion to be able to meet the vol­umes these new indus­tries are going to require. I think I’m cor­rect in say­ing Cir­rus is prob­a­bly the largest vol­ume man­u­fac­tur­er of com­pos­ite air­craft in the world and it pro­duces 400 a year. 

This is a lot in the tra­di­tion­al air­craft space, but if you look down the road of what the AAM indus­try has to offer and its poten­tial, it’s nowhere near enough. You’re going to need thou­sands of air­craft used every year to be suc­cess­ful. So the indus­try gen­er­al­ly is going to have to find and devise new man­u­fac­tur­ing method­olo­gies for these struc­tures of the air­craft. Doing that is eas­i­ly said but not quite so eas­i­ly done.

Q: ARIA’s exper­tise is in advanced com­pos­ite man­u­fac­tur­ing. Can I ask you about the dif­fer­ent process­es and the avail­able mate­ri­als in this sec­tor?

I think it’s fair to say near­ly all the man­u­fac­tur­ers and cer­tain­ly the larg­er com­pa­nies with the biggest bud­gets are all using very tra­di­tion­al com­pos­ite tech­nol­o­gy, tech­niques and mate­ri­als. So pre-approved car­bon fibre prepreg mate­ri­als with tra­di­tion­al hand lay­out, auto­clave man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es which are real­ly good. But they’re very cost­ly, time con­sum­ing and don’t scale too well. 

We did some quick analy­sis of what Joby would need to meet its pro­posed ulti­mate vol­umes and some­thing like 10,000 peo­ple lam­i­nat­ing and 350 auto­claves run­ning con­tin­u­ous­ly to be able to meet their man­u­fac­tur­ing goals, which is not a viable solu­tion for large vol­ume man­u­fac­tur­ing. 

There’s oth­er oth­er tech­nolo­gies which exist in com­pos­ites, such as resin infu­sion and resin trans­fer and rest mould­ing and ther­mo­plas­tics ther­moset plas­tics, all of which indi­vid­u­al­ly and in dif­fer­ent ways have promis­es of oppor­tu­ni­ty. But actu­al­ly evolv­ing those tech­niques to be able to pro­duce at the right price and to meet the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments is going to take a lot of work and a lot of inno­va­tion. 

So I think that’s the area where we have some exper­tise. We have our part­ners which have also been study­ing those tech­nolo­gies and process­es for a long time to real­ly under­stand the nuances of what that’s going to take. The next phase of AAM air­craft will be to take the designs and the effort that we put in so far and under­stand how to indus­tri­alise to much high­er vol­umes and more afford­able solu­tions.

Q: Can you share any projects in par­tic­u­lar that show­cas­es the work CO-LEKTIV is doing in the mar­ket?

We’ve worked with a lot of the major com­pa­nies and last year we were very proud of the work we did with Mark Moore and his new com­pa­ny Whis­per Aero, which is devel­op­ing a new elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem.

There are a lot of real­ly smart peo­ple work­ing to solve these big prob­lems. The indus­try is rac­ing very quick­ly to val­i­date the promise to get these air­craft fly­ing and to prove the valid­i­ty of using elec­tric propul­sion for avi­a­tion and for rel­a­tive­ly short dis­tance trav­el.

There’s a lot of com­pa­nies work­ing to prove that with the first gen­er­a­tion of prod­ucts. I think the big lift will be after that; how do we scale this to a real­ly viable and mature oppor­tu­ni­ty that can make dra­mat­ic changes to the way peo­ple live.

Q: What are you top three indus­try trends and why?

I think it’s an inter­est­ing ques­tion and obvi­ous­ly every com­pa­ny has a slight­ly dif­fer­ent answer. If you look at tra­di­tion­al avi­a­tion and from the 1960s, there was a whole peri­od of evo­lu­tion that took place over 60 years basi­cal­ly, where we tried to work out what were the right kind of air­craft to do the things that peo­ple real­ly need­ed.

And there was a nice 60-year peri­od where we start­ed mak­ing these tiny air­craft and there were some mil­i­tary cus­tomers and the postal ser­vice which need­ed thin air­craft and so on. And over 60 years we refine that down to com­mer­cial avi­a­tion that we know today and the Boe­ing 737s of the world. 

I think the AAM mar­ket is try­ing to answer the ques­tion about what is the right solu­tion. You’ve got hun­dreds of com­pa­nies all with a slight­ly dif­fer­ent answer to what the right solu­tion is. But I also think we don’t exact­ly know what the ques­tion is. It’s a very inter­est­ing peri­od with a tremen­dous amount of inno­va­tion.

As trends go, there’s going to be quite a lot of inter­est in car­go. From the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion aspect, it’s going to be eas­i­er to cer­ti­fy an air­craft and get it to do car­go oper­a­tions than trans­port pas­sen­gers. 

And I think the indus­try is also under­stand­ing that the pow­er require­ments for straight VTOL  air­craft ver­sus some kind of tran­si­tion­al air­craft to have lift through fixed wings is real­ly a require­ment at this point. 

We don’t have enough pow­er den­si­ty to not get the advan­tage of fixed wing air­craft. I think eSTOL air­craft, have a lot of poten­tial in the short range. So I think those are a cou­ple of trends that you might see a lot more focus on. Avi­a­tion as a ser­vice ver­sus avi­a­tion as a hob­by or for high net worth indi­vid­u­als, is the two dif­fer­ent ques­tions to cre­ation as a ser­vice and par­tic­u­lar­ly the taxi mod­el. 

I think we’re going to have to real­ly under­stand how quick­ly adop­tion is and how much busi­ness will be avail­able. That will define what the air­craft look like. Today, we have air­craft con­fig­u­ra­tions with four pas­sen­gers and a pilot or up to 19 pas­sen­gers so where the sweet spot is is dif­fer­ent for peo­ple to com­plete­ly under­stand. These first gen­er­a­tion of air­craft will help real­ly help define the ques­tion and help to bring to focus what the cor­rect answers are.

How do you see the AAM mar­ket evolv­ing over the next five to 10 years?

I’m per­son­al­ly a real­ly big fan of the region­al air mobil­i­ty aspect. One of the rea­sons is that it has exist­ed before. The air­line indus­try is tremen­dous­ly astute and effi­cient oper­a­tors when it comes to mov­ing peo­ple and they have already been in the region­al busi­ness. It has proved to be some­thing desir­able from a cus­tomer stand­point, but finan­cial­ly not viable. 

But I think the new AAM prod­ucts, which have the poten­tial to be more cost effec­tive, envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly and safer, could real­ly unlock that. So I think we might find that those oper­a­tions could come on line quite quick­ly if the prod­ucts are there to sup­port cost-effec­tive solu­tions for the air­lines and oth­er indus­tries to get involved with quick­ly. 

I also think Region­al Air Mobil­i­ty in many ways is a safer bet. We already know there are cus­tomers lin­ing up as there have been a series of small, small­er air­craft his­tor­i­cal­ly oper­at­ed in those areas. They just haven’t been able to oper­ate cost effec­tive­ly enough to make those busi­ness­es viable. But I think the new advance­ments could answer that prob­lem.

Q: Final thoughts? 

I’m very opti­mistic about AAM. I think there’s so many great things about it and I don’t think the pub­lic quite realise what the poten­tial of it is. As they start to under­stand the abil­i­ty to move pas­sen­gers and car­go quick­ly and afford­ably, it’s going to become tremen­dous­ly desir­able for peo­ple to use AAM.

We’re very excit­ed at CO-LEKTIV to be part of a group of real­ly smart peo­ple around the world that are try­ing to solve these prob­lems. There are a tremen­dous depth of ben­e­fits. And I think the pub­lic’s just start­ing to under­stand what those are. 

As they start to see air­craft fly and they trav­el one them­selves, they will real­ly under­stand what this could bring to them. I think we’re going to see the mar­ket real­ly grow from a pub­lic per­cep­tion which is going to be a very excit­ing time.