Interview with AutoFlight’s New CCO Chad Cashin

Chad Cashin for­mer­ly of Uber Ele­vate and Joby Avi­a­tion was recent­ly appoint­ed Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer (CCO) of Chi­na-based Aut­oFlight. He explains why he moved from Joby and enthus­es about the poten­tial of Aut­oFlight and its eVTOL pas­sen­ger and car­go car­ry­ing Pros­per­i­ty 1, before offer­ing his views on the excit­ing future of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty.

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Chris Stonor Asks The Ques­tions.

When did you first become inter­est­ed in Urban Air Mobil­i­ty?

I start­ed fly­ing when I was 13 years-old. I have been a pri­vate pilot ever since. I am a self-con­fessed avi­a­tion geek, so it wasn’t hard to be attract­ed. It was dur­ing the time at Uber that my inter­est real­ly began. I think the indus­try is ter­rif­ic.

I worked with the Ele­vate team car­ry­ing out a lot of busi­ness devel­op­ment work. Through them I got to know Joby and JoeBen (Bevirt) as the com­pa­ny was a silent part­ner. Also, get­ting to know the var­i­ous OEMs Ele­vate was part­nered with, at the time. I learned who was real; who was will­ing to take the risks; who had the fund­ing and progress. Joby impressed me. No mock-up mod­els on dis­play at events and that sort of thing.

I joined the com­pa­ny as one of its first com­mer­cial hires and led cor­po­rate strat­e­gy and busi­ness devel­op­ment. I was there for around two and a half years. I became involved because I knew they had a three year lead on its com­peti­tors. I worked on Joby’s acqui­si­tion of Uber Ele­vate and bring­ing my old friends into the com­pa­ny, as well as on the SPAC process. Joby remains an incred­i­ble com­pa­ny. It always has been.

Chad Cashin

Why then did you join Aut­oFlight?

The more I learned about Aut­oFlight the more shocked and sur­prised I became. I had known the pri­ma­ry com­pa­ny investor, Lukasz Gad­ows­ki, CEO of Team Glob­al, for sev­er­al years, but it was after I dis­cov­ered the company’s flight progress and tran­si­tions; that they had flown thou­sands of miles already. Their veloc­i­ty of devel­op­ment has been impres­sive. You can’t fake fly­ing.

Meet­ing Omer Bar-Yohay, (recent Com­pa­ny Pres­i­dent, for­mer Founder and CEO of Evi­a­tion) was also a huge part of my deci­sion. He is an incred­i­ble oper­a­tor. Omer’s done amaz­ing things in avi­a­tion. I am very excit­ed to work with him. Job choic­es are very per­son­al deci­sions. Exter­nal pieces go in to it too. I still love Joby. Just look­ing at its craft, it is dif­fi­cult not to swoon.

Aut­oFlight seems to have come out of nowhere.

I com­plete­ly agree. This is Lukasz largest invest­ment com­pared to his oth­er eVTOL com­pa­nies like Volo­copter and Archer. This too real­ly peaked my curios­i­ty.

In your view, what makes Aut­oFlight spe­cial?

My big head­line state­ment is the com­pa­ny is a qui­et No.2. It is fly­ing two gen­er­a­tions of air­craft with a third com­ing online short­ly. This will lead lat­er to gain­ing full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in 2025. That’s impres­sive in itself. The fact the craft has tran­si­tioned, no-one else has apart from Joby and to a less­er extent Lil­i­um.

I real­ly believe in Aut­oFlight I real­ly do. We did a lot of work on con­fig­u­ra­tions at Ele­vate. In my view, the per­fect world design is 100 per­cent tilt. Your drag then turns into thrust. There are no drag motors sit­ting there, but we don’t live in a per­fect world. The sim­plic­i­ty of AutoFlight’s Pros­per­i­ty design gets you to a fea­si­ble eco­nom­ic price point, with an eas­i­er cer­ti­fi­ca­tion path and man­u­fac­tur­ing. Not only has the com­pa­ny around 500 employ­ees, but the Founder’s (Tian Yu) pre­vi­ous com­pa­nies have con­struct­ed mil­lions of scaled elec­tric air­craft. This expe­ri­ence alone allows it to avoid throw­ing any curve balls at the reg­u­la­tors EASA and FAA.

Anoth­er major point is the com­pa­ny has already built a major fac­to­ry ready to con­struct its eVTOLs. There is no half a bil­lion dol­lars invest­ment required. This premise has the abil­i­ty to build the big expen­sive phys­i­cal com­po­nents such as the car­bon fibre fuse­lage and brush­less elec­tric motors. And being made in Chi­na offers high­ly attrac­tive sav­ings com­pared to Europe or Amer­i­ca.

So, Aut­oFlight already has the three major fac­tors required. Its flight progress is sec­ond only to Joby; a sim­plic­i­ty of design; plus man­u­fac­tur­ing, puts in all the pieces to make this project work.

I have viewed tons of eVTOL com­pa­nies with 20 in detail. If you want to be around for the long term, you need these three parts. Aut­oFlight has them. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly cool, espe­cial­ly when the world had not heard of the com­pa­ny until recent­ly. I was super sur­prised when I learned about all of this. It is a fan­tas­tic plat­form for myself and Omer to push for­ward.

Tian Yu and Lukasz Gad­ows­ki

Why is the com­pa­ny so focussed on Europe and U.S, why not Chi­na?

Tian knows the U.S well. He has already brought a num­ber of dif­fer­ent exper­i­men­tal air­craft to the coun­try. Europe and Amer­i­ca are the places to be, if you wish to bring a craft to a mass glob­al mar­ket. While the safe­ty bars are high and it is a tougher road, you need to be there.

Are you the CCO for the world or just the U.S?

Any planes sold around the world hap­pens under my watch. I gained the job through the grapevine as so often hap­pens in tight indus­tries like this one. I am based in Amer­i­ca, where we have a hangar and office space at Napa Coun­ty Air­port in Cal­i­for­nia.

What are your views on the eVTOL noise fac­tor. How impor­tant is this?

To pro­duce a suc­cess­ful eVTOL you require three major things. Safe­ty comes first, fol­lowed by the noise pro­file and then run­ning costs. If you don’t have all three you don’t have an inno­va­tion. There­fore, there is a huge focus at Aut­oFlight to keep the noise pro­file to an accept­able lev­el.

The goal for the indus­try is the 70Db mark. This lev­el hits a lot of sen­si­tive pub­lic noise thresh­olds. You can fly where you want to then. And if you can get the deci­bel lev­el even less, all the bet­ter. It is the take off and land­ing sites. That’s the cru­cial part. To keep these areas as qui­et as pos­si­ble.

Napa Coun­ty Air­port

What exact­ly is your role as the CCO?

My role is to sell a lot of air­craft and as many and as ear­ly as pos­si­ble. To achieve this, you need to be present in the area your are tar­get­ing, whether it is Amer­i­ca or South Korea. You must learn about the country’s set-up. The region­al air­craft com­pa­nies, the oper­a­tors, cre­at­ing part­ner­ships and grow­ing with them as you lead towards com­mer­cial cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

A big advan­tage for us is the price point. Omer has been very scep­ti­cal about the eVTOL indus­try pre­vi­ous­ly. He didn’t see where the prof­its could be made. Aut­oFlight is the first eVTOL com­pa­ny, where he sees the eco­nom­ic light.

Have you sold any air­craft yet?

We are sell­ing all along the way. Pros­per­i­ty is both a pas­sen­ger and car­go air­craft. We have made sales of both. This has not been men­tioned pub­licly yet, but will be so in 3 to 6 months. Mov­ing for­ward, the mar­ket is huge. There’s plen­ty of poten­tial sales out there.

Are you con­cerned that by 2025, some of your com­peti­tors will already have had a year or more start on you?

Being a first mover isn’t crit­i­cal here. No com­pa­ny will be able to build hun­dreds of its craft in the ear­ly stages due to both sup­ply chain issues and the infra­struc­ture. So no, we are not wor­ried about this.

How will the infra­struc­ture prob­lem be resolved?

First, it is impor­tant to be involved with the process, although not to be direct­ly respon­si­ble for the financ­ing. Ini­tial­ly, Urban Air Mobil­i­ty must become geo­graph­ic spe­cif­ic. Part­ner­ing with the right groups, edu­cat­ing region­al law­mak­ers. You need to focus on key zones and work to make it hap­pen. An impor­tant fac­tor is the pub­lic must see eVTOLs in action to over­come any ini­tial con­cerns.

The real first movers that mat­ter in this indus­try will be the munic­i­pal­i­ties, who are will­ing to break the mould and go out on a limb. Oth­er cities will then fol­low. For this to hap­pen the indus­try needs to tar­get spe­cif­ic areas and show the law­mak­ers, for exam­ple, how UAM will cost far less to set up than the con­struc­tion of new roads or rail. From there, the sec­ond movers will emerge and so on.

What is AutoFlight’s time­line lead­ing up to 2025?

First, we’ll begin flight tri­als over Amer­i­ca, start­ing in Q1 of next year and build from there with oth­ers to fol­low in Europe. We are look­ing at EASA, first, for com­mer­cial cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The reg­u­la­tor is more pre­scrip­tive right now com­pared to the FAA. We are present­ly fly­ing a Gen 2, where 3 comes along a lit­tle lat­er. We are going pilot­ed, at first, and are look­ing at the U.S and Europe to be our ini­tial pri­ma­ry mar­kets.

Present­ly, col­lab­o­ra­tion between eVTOL com­pa­nies is the most impor­tant thing. There are some ter­rif­ic air­craft out there. Infra­struc­ture is a huge prob­lem, which we all have to tack­le togeth­er. A ris­ing tide lifts all boats.

The SPAC mar­ket has brought com­pet­i­tive dynam­ics to bear, but in the right way. While, it is a mea­sur­ing stick on com­pa­ny val­u­a­tions, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is the great equalis­er. Once achieved then it becomes full on com­pe­ti­tion.

Giv­en the huge costs of bring­ing an eVTOL air­craft to mar­ket are you look­ing to go pub­lic in the near future?

Apart from Team Glob­al we have oth­er investors like TDK from Japan. It is best for us to remain pri­vate and con­tin­ue to raise mon­ey when nec­es­sary. Pri­vate is per­fect for us right now.

How do you see the indus­try evolv­ing?

The present air­craft rep­re­sent the Mod­el T Ford of the car indus­try. They will con­tin­ue to evolve with bet­ter pow­er­trains and tech­nolo­gies. Ini­tial­ly, the pas­sen­ger cost will be sim­i­lar to Uber Black. Once auton­o­my hits, this will be the major game chang­er. Over­heads come down along with pas­sen­ger prices and every­thing changes.

Have you flown an eVTOL via a sim­u­la­tor?

Yes, very much so. Sim­u­la­tors are great fun. Com­pared to a heli­copter, eVTOLs are very intu­itive and sim­ple to use.

Final­ly, what are your inter­ests out­side of work?

Fly­ing fixed wing craft is my pas­sion, but I have a 15 month old baby, so my time is some­what lim­it­ed, at present. I love surf­ing and moun­tain bik­ing. I present­ly live in San­ta Cruz, Cal­i­for­nia, near to Mon­terey Bay, so the loca­tion helps. I grew up close to Sil­i­con Val­ley, so get­ting involved with the eVTOL indus­try kin­da makes com­plete sense.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.autoflight.com/en/

(Pics: Aut­oFlight)