Interview with PLANA AERO Founder/CEO Braden J. Kim

evtolinsights.com has pub­lished sev­er­al arti­cles in recent weeks about the excit­ing new 7‑seater hybrid eVTOL Air­craft being pro­duced by South Kore­an com­pa­ny, PLANA AERO. This week, local media out­let, Yon­hap News Agency, pub­lished an inter­view with PLANA’s Founder and CEO, Braden J. Kim.

The jour­nal­ist, Choi Kyong-ae, points out that PLANA is South Korea’s sole eVTOL start-up. The com­pa­ny was set-up in July, 2021 by Kim, an MIT grad­u­ate who before had led Hyundai’s Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) team, before the project trans­formed in to Super­nal.

Kim believes “All-elec­tric VTOL air­craft can­not trav­el long dis­tances due to a short bat­tery life, where high fixed costs and short-dis­tance oper­a­tions with­in cities won’t allow com­pa­nies to make a prof­it.”

South Korea: Plana Aero Joins eVTOL Race With Unique-Look­ing, 7‑Seat Hybrid-Pow­ered Fly­ing Taxi

There­fore, PLANA is pro­duc­ing a hybrid eVTOL equipped with a tur­bine gen­er­a­tor and bat­tery pack. The com­pa­ny has already attract­ed close to USD10 mil­lion invest­ment from a first round of fundrais­ing. Kim is con­sid­er­ing a sec­ond in Q2 of next year.

He explains that while major com­pa­nies have good cap­i­tal and broad net­works, they are usu­al­ly less com­pet­i­tive in terms of speed. “Star­tups are lead­ing the UAM mar­ket as they can focus on mak­ing very fast deci­sions on key man­age­ment issues,” says Kim.

He points out PLANA plans to pro­duce an air­craft that is one-fourth the size of a hybrid eVTOL air­craft by ear­ly next year and com­plete its test flight with­in the first half of 2023.

This pho­to tak­en Nov. 2, 2022, shows PLANA CEO Braden Kim talk­ing about his hybrid eVTOL air­craft plans dur­ing an inter­view with Yon­hap News Agency at a Hollys Cof­fee out­let in Jong­no, cen­tral Seoul. (Yon­hap)

By 2028, the com­pa­ny aims to gain full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and begin com­mer­cial oper­a­tions. The air­craft will car­ry up to six pas­sen­gers and one pilot with a cruis­ing speed of 300 kph and a flight range of more than 500 km. It will weigh 3 tons and be 15 metres in length.

PLANA aims to set-up a U.S office next year to begin the process to obtain the FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Kim remarks, “U.S elec­tric avi­a­tion com­pa­nies, like Joby Avi­a­tion, Archer Avi­a­tion and Beta Tech­nolo­gies, are push­ing the FAA to cre­ate cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards for eVTOL air­craft that did­n’t exist before. We expect such U.S (or glob­al) stan­dards as ear­ly as 2024.”

To cov­er the test­ing and tri­alling costs, PLANA is look­ing to list on the U.S. stock mar­ket in 2026 to raise funds of up to 1 tril­lion won.

Kim com­ments, “If we suc­ceed in gain­ing U.S cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, we will com­mer­cialise our hybrid eVTOL air­craft, there first, fol­lowed by East Asia, which has many islands, as well as Europe.”

He believes there is a “mar­ket under­stand­ing” that a hybrid eVTOL air­craft will have less dif­fi­cul­ties in launch­ing its air taxi ser­vices com­pared with ful­ly elec­tric air­craft, as it can oper­ate like a heli­copter.

Kim con­tin­ues, “Heli­copters are every­where, and we will be able to replace this exist­ing mar­ket as our air­craft is the hybrid-elec­tric equiv­a­lent.” PLANA explains it will begin with inter-city air taxi ser­vices rather than inner-city ser­vices due main­ly to strict reg­u­la­tions in heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas.

Hybrid eVTOL Plana Aero Signs LOI with Elec­tric Pow­er Sys­tems for AAM Bat­ter­ies

After sign­ing a let­ter of intent with Elec­tric Pow­er Sys­tems (EPS) last week to deploy the U.S fir­m’s bat­tery sys­tems for its air­craft, the com­pa­ny is “in-talks” with air­craft engine com­pa­nies from the U.S and Europe for tech­nol­o­gy part­ner­ships. Gen­er­al Elec­tric and Rolls-Royce could become poten­tial tur­bine engine sup­pli­ers.

The com­pa­ny has hired close to 50 engi­neers with for­mer work­ing pedi­grees from such pres­ti­gious com­pa­nies as Hyundai, Air­bus SE, Rolls-Royce and Sam­sung Elec­tron­ics. PLANA aims to increase the num­ber of employ­ees to 120 by 2023 and 200 by 2024.

Mor­gan Stan­ley fore­casts the world’s UAM mar­ket may con­tin­ue to grow to USD55 bil­lion by 2030 and a huge USD1 tril­lion in 2040. In the report the finan­cial insti­tu­tion writes, “In our minds, the birth of eVTOL/UAM at scale is not a mat­ter of ‘if’ but rather when, how and what must be over­come along the way.”

Kim con­tin­ues, “We expect hybrid eVTOL air­craft to bring a par­a­digm shift in the air­line indus­try, just as smart­phones did in less than a decade.” He con­cludes, “This is the only oppor­tu­ni­ty for star­tups to gen­er­ate a hybrid-elec­tric air­craft mar­ket by 2030, where the lead­ing play­ers will gain a big­ger share after­wards.”

(News Source: https://en.yna.co.kr/)

(Top image: PLANA)