J. Scott Drennan sets up new consulting business, Drennan Innovation, six months after joining Hyundai’s UAM division

J. Scott Dren­nan, the for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent of Research and Devel­op­ment at Hyundai’s Urban Air Mobil­i­ty divi­sion, and Hyundai Motor Group, have agreed to vol­un­tar­i­ly sep­a­rate, with Dren­nan set­ting up his own busi­ness, Dren­nan Inno­va­tion.

The com­pa­ny will pro­vide engi­neer­ing ser­vices and lead­er­ship con­sult­ing to clients across the mobil­i­ty space and pri­or to join­ing Hyundai, Dren­nan had spent more than 25 years at Bell Tex­tron, mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the V‑22, the AW609 and the V‑280 VTOL air­craft.

He was also Vice Pres­i­dent of Inno­va­tion at Bell Tex­tron, where he was respon­si­ble for devel­op­ing advanced con­fig­u­ra­tions, tech­nolo­gies and ver­ti­cal lift mis­sions, to advance Bell Textron’s com­mer­cial and mil­i­tary busi­ness.

After a busy launch week, Dren­nan spoke to eVTOLInsights.com about the rea­sons behind set­ting up the com­pa­ny and what he hopes it can offer to those work­ing in the advanced air mobil­i­ty sec­tor.

Q: Could you tell us a bit more about the back­ground behind set­ting up Dren­nan Inno­va­tion?

J.Scott Dren­nan: “I felt like it was a great moment to get out on my own and start some­thing that was based on the expe­ri­ence that I’ve had over the last 26 or so years of a real­ly great aero­space career.

“I had been exposed to many tech­ni­cal aspects of what it takes to launch and pro­vide VTOL air­craft for cus­tomers, but also start­ed to get exposed lat­er in my career to the busi­ness aspects of it – that broad­er ques­tion about mobil­i­ty, now that we’re all think­ing about these as entire sys­tems of sys­tems.

“A lot of times in the past, we may have bro­ken it up into ‘this per­son is going to pro­vide the air­craft, and this per­son will pro­vide the oper­a­tions, and this per­son will pro­vide man­u­fac­tur­ing, infra­struc­ture’.

“There’s still room for that today, but one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing things about advanced air mobil­i­ty, and in par­tic­u­lar eVTOL air­craft that would serve to move peo­ple around in their com­mu­ni­ties, is that those enti­ties need to be so much clos­er togeth­er.

“That has been real­ly fas­ci­nat­ing, the syn­er­gies that have to be cre­at­ed between the vehi­cle and the com­mu­ni­ty for noise and safe­ty rea­sons, between the vehi­cle and infra­struc­ture that it oper­ates in, and then the main­te­nance plan­ning and how man­u­fac­tur­ing relates to the orig­i­nal engi­neer­ing design and how it relates to the vehi­cle that is out there and per­form­ing its mis­sion. 

“And now, to think of the vehi­cle itself as part of a wider mobil­i­ty sys­tem that we all need to enjoy more free­dom and flex­i­bil­i­ty in how we move is won­der­ful. The pro­gres­sion has been very excit­ing for me.”

Q: What would you say are Dren­nan Innovation’s ambi­tions for the indus­try, as we enter into this new advanced air mobil­i­ty mar­ket?

JSD: “My first goal is to help folks that have a com­mon vision, and I look at three pieces there: com­pa­nies which have a good foun­da­tion in physics, not one which is over­ly done so that it restricts you, but one that is aware of the bound­aries that physics cre­ates and the oppor­tu­ni­ties it cre­ates.

“The sec­ond is that I want to help peo­ple who want this to amount to some­thing bet­ter for our com­mu­ni­ty and soci­ety. I’m not so much inter­est­ed in a quick hit. I real­ly want to give some­thing to our com­mu­ni­ties that is cen­tred around my strengths as an indi­vid­ual and as a mem­ber of teams. That’s real­ly impor­tant to me.

“And the third is that I’d like to find folks that have amaz­ing peo­ple on board. I take a lot of my ener­gy from the inter­ac­tion with bril­liant minds, watch­ing and lead­ing and fos­ter­ing growth in teams made up of folks like that. It is so ful­fill­ing to me.

“When I look for my ini­tial clients and cus­tomers at Dren­nan Inno­va­tion, I’m look­ing for those three char­ac­ter­is­tics: stay true to physics, but be aggres­sive with it; have a broad­er vision that helps our com­mu­ni­ties because that’s what engi­neer­ing is all about; and then have great peo­ple on board.

“What that then leads to is the excit­ing part for the future, is an oppor­tu­ni­ty where that group of folk can tran­si­tion with Dren­nan Inno­va­tion to that big­ger step of an all-inclu­sive air mobil­i­ty com­pa­ny which can pro­vide the vehi­cle, the man­u­fac­tur­ing, the oper­a­tions and that inter­ac­tion that all those pieces need with our com­mu­ni­ty and the dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture that the vehi­cle will have to oper­ate in.”

Q: We’re cur­rent­ly see­ing a lot of momen­tum in the advanced air mobil­i­ty sec­tor. Do you think Dren­nan Inno­va­tion has come in at the right time as more com­pa­nies seek to get a slice of this rather lucra­tive pie?

JSD: “I think it has. In my expe­ri­ence of cer­ti­fy­ing VTOL air­craft and run­ning pro­grammes for pro­duc­tion vehi­cles, this is the hard part that we’re about to enter. Many play­ers are get­ting clos­er to the ques­tions of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and pro­duc­tion, not just the ear­ly stage pro­duc­tion – but high rate.

“And the third bit is the infra­struc­ture and the com­mu­ni­ties them­selves are real­ly start­ing to ask them­selves the hard ques­tion of whether they can accom­mo­date this type of trans­porta­tion. 

“I have seen a lot of folks in my opin­ion and to no fault of their own, thought that maybe these parts aren’t as chal­leng­ing and that’s the point where play­ers are right now. And I think I can help a lot in those areas. 

“Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is a true part­ner­ship between the indi­vid­ual appli­cant and the FAA and gov­ern­ment and there is a lot of knowl­edge you need to have about the exist­ing rules, it’s very help­ful to know how they have been applied in the past and it’s also a mar­ket that is going to require some new rules to be made.

“You think that the part­ner­ship for a tra­di­tion­al heli­copter or air­craft cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is dif­fi­cult and requires good team­ing, wait until you have to cre­ate some rules to guar­an­tee the safe­ty of the users and the com­mu­ni­ties. I can cer­tain­ly help there. 

“My expe­ri­ence on the 609, which thanks to Leonar­do, is soon to be the first civ­il cer­ti­fied tiltro­tor. It led me down a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion path that was quite unique – we had to not only use exist­ing rules from the heli­copter and fixed wing parts but the FAA part­nered with us to come up with new roles called TR and those are part of the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion basis and the eVTOL mar­ket will be sim­i­lar.

“We’ll find pieces we can use but also put our heads togeth­er and cre­ate new rules that are not only good for the exact air­craft that is being dis­cussed at the time, but for the rest of the com­pa­nies which are try­ing to do the same great task of cer­ti­fy­ing and pro­duc­ing the vehi­cle.”

Q: Are there any cur­rent chal­lenges that you’re see­ing in the indus­try, which you feel Dren­nan Inno­va­tion could help with, or that peo­ple might be over­look­ing?

JSD: “I always want to help in terms of safe­ty. I def­i­nite­ly want to be a part of that. The nice thing about safe­ty is that every­one agrees it’s your first pri­or­i­ty, so it nat­u­ral­ly cre­ates a con­ver­a­ton point for you.

“I think I can bring some unique expe­ri­ence there when you talk about true sys­tem safe­ty and how dif­fer­ent sys­tems that are inte­grat­ed into one vehi­cle need to inter­act in the prop­er way, so as not to cre­ate a sin­gle point of fail­ure or chain reac­tion-type fail­ures.

“Car­ry­ing it not only in the vehi­cle and through­out the vehi­cle, but then let’s car­ry it to the oper­a­tional stand­point where we have to cre­ate a vehi­cle which is eas­i­er for pilots to fly and oper­a­tors to move through the air­space if it’s more autonomous. And then from a main­te­nance stand­point. 

“When you think about those things togeth­er, it all sounds quite daunt­ing because they feel like sep­a­rate pieces of the pie. So how are you able to be good at cre­at­ing safe­ty in those three pieces, well it’s the real­i­sa­tion that they are so close­ly tied togeth­er.

“We have to remem­ber that the engi­neer­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is based on the design, and then the pro­duc­tion cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is based on your capa­bil­i­ty to actu­al­ly make what you engi­neer repeat­ed­ly and in a qual­i­ty fash­ion, so the two are tied togeth­er and to sep­a­rate them is fool­ish.

“And then when you think about main­te­nance you have to per­form, it’s sim­ply a result of the engi­neer­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing of the enti­ty and it’s the future actions of that result of what you did at the engi­neer­ing and pro­duc­tion stage. Keep­ing them all togeth­er will cre­ate a safer envi­ron­ment and I’m real­ly excit­ed to be a part of that.”

Q: Can you give us some insight into what 2020 has been like for the indus­try and where you think it could go in 2021?

JSD: “The trap­pings of it have changed. Instead of get­ting togeth­er and hav­ing con­fer­ences which is of course what I pre­fer, we’re all doing Zoom calls which has been dif­fi­cult.

“I look at this in two ways: if you’re com­mit­ted to some­thing because your vision is aligned with the bet­ter­ment of your soci­ety and com­mu­ni­ty, which is the ulti­mate goal of engi­neer­ing, these down­times only pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ty.

“It doesn’t feel like it at the moment, because the econ­o­my is tough, we can’t bring peo­ple togeth­er to do the work we’re sup­posed to do, but in an emerg­ing mar­ket that doesn’t exist to-date and which has so much promise like Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty does, I think this is the moment which will show who is going to per­sist.

“If you have the courage and resources to do it, I think you’ll come out the oth­er side of this pan­dem­ic in a real­ly good place. The sec­ond piece is this ques­tion of whether we going to trav­el as much togeth­er. We’ve seen the effect it has had on the air­lines.

“But I won­der if that is not because of the inher­ent longer range in those flights. These kind of the things [Covid-19] make you want to stay clos­er to the peo­ple you know, your fam­i­ly and imme­di­ate com­mu­ni­ty.

“And so, these longer flights are of course going to suf­fer a bit, but that’s where I get excit­ed about eVTOL air­craft and advanced air mobil­i­ty. It’s always been about con­nect­ing us over short­er dis­tances in more effi­cient ways.

“So in a sense, this return­ing to our com­mu­ni­ty and our need to still move around phys­i­cal­ly with good mobil­i­ty solu­tions, offers a real­ly good oppor­tu­ni­ty. 

“You may have to rethink the vehi­cles a bit, maybe the num­ber of peo­ple needs to come down a lit­tle because of the small­er groups that are trav­el­ling, but I think that’s real­ly inter­est­ing.

“I think a real­ly good mobil­i­ty sys­tem that includes the ground, air and the rest of our pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tems could be a god­send for post-pan­dem­ic life because we’re so inter­est­ed in stay­ing close to each oth­er and local.”

Q: Any­thing else you’d like to add?

JSD: “I’d like to express my grat­i­tude. I always take on things like this with a good mea­sure of humil­i­ty, because I know I work best with oth­ers in col­lab­o­ra­tive teams and for me to get an oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk like this to a wide audi­ence.

“It helps me with my goals of bring­ing peo­ple togeth­er and not keep­ing them apart. I’m look­ing for­ward to col­lab­o­rat­ing with folks where we share those three core val­ues and think it can lead to greater things than just a con­sult­ing rela­tion­ship and onto the next step.”

A web­site is due to be launched short­ly, but for more infor­ma­tion, you can con­tact J. Scott Dren­nan via email at jscottdrennan@me.com or by con­nect­ing with him via his LinkedIn page.