Q&A: Felipe Varon of Varon Vehicles gives update on company’s planned UAM roadmap for Latin America

Varon Vehi­cles recent­ly announced a joint col­lab­o­ra­tion with Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty — the eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er — to help accel­er­ate the idea of urban air mobil­i­ty in Latin Amer­i­ca.

And more recent­ly, it announced a sim­i­lar part­ner­ship with TruWeath­er Solu­tions, which will help inte­grate weath­er and micro-weath­er capa­bil­i­ties into Varon Vehicle’s Traf­fic Man­age­ment Sys­tems (TMS).

Led by CEO and Founder Felipe Varon, Varon Vehi­cles aims to cre­ate a new trans­porta­tion net­work of ver­ti­ports and vir­tu­al lanes — start­ing off in Colom­bia, and the part­ner­ships with Jaunt and TruWeath­er Solu­tions are vital pieces in the ecosys­tem jig­saw.

eVTOL Insights spoke to Felipe in more detail about the Jaunt part­ner­ship, but he also pro­vid­ed some detail about Varon Vehi­cles’ plans for cities in Latin Amer­i­ca in the years to come.

Q: What has Varon Vehi­cles been up to since we last spoke? It seems like it’s going to be anoth­er busy year for you.

Felipe Varon: “We are very focused on our plan for 2021, which is to start our exhi­bi­tions phase and that has a lot of things hap­pen­ing in the next two to three years. We fin­ished 2020 with the con­sol­i­da­tion of our ecosys­tem and were very hap­py with our first com­pa­ny sum­mit — Sky­scraper 2020 — and are now try­ing to adapt to this new COVID real­i­ty.

“This year, we are focused on two very impor­tant aspects. Num­ber one is pub­lic accep­tance and num­ber two is the legal frame­work in which to oper­ate. So, pub­lic accep­tance; you know it’s not just the gen­er­al pub­lic. It’s com­mu­ni­ties over where we’ll be fly­ing, politi­cians, pol­i­cy­mak­ers includ­ing Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) offi­cers. It is also land reg­u­la­tors and so on.

“I think pub­lic accep­tance is real­ly, real­ly impor­tant right now and may even be the num­ber one thing we need to achieve. And that’s impor­tant strate­gi­cal­ly so that once we start actu­al imple­men­ta­tion, we find open doors, instead of closed ones.

“The oth­er thing we need to start achiev­ing is the legal frame­work in which to oper­ate. We’ll be launch­ing our first infra­struc­ture net­work in Colom­bia and have a cho­sen city, so we are already mov­ing our chips in terms of land allo­ca­tion, work­ing with the air­port and oth­er places where we’re going to have oper­a­tions. And we’re also work­ing with the CAA as we devel­op and design the air­spaces. The vehi­cles will prob­a­bly be pilot­ed by reg­u­lar pilots at first, but down the line we need to move away from pilots and we need to move into what we call oper­a­tors.

“They’ll prob­a­bly be exper­i­men­tal air­craft at first, even­tu­al­ly they’ll need to have their own reg­u­la­tions and that’s where the Colom­bian CAA real­ly desires to have a glob­al lead­er­ship and be a spear­head leader in that reg­u­la­tion side. We’re see­ing a very pos­i­tive envi­ron­ment and to achieve those two things is our focus in 2021, and prob­a­bly for the next cou­ple of years.”

Q: I com­plete­ly agree with the pub­lic accep­tance ele­ment, Felipe. What is Varon Vehi­cles going to be doing to make more peo­ple aware of this kind of tech­nol­o­gy, do you have any ini­tia­tives or projects in store?

FV: “Yes, we have a clear roadmap and a min­i­mum viable prod­uct, which is very impor­tant. We will be able to dis­close more about this in the next months, but it’s a very spe­cif­ic plan to tar­get those two spe­cif­ic strate­gic pur­pos­es.

“The min­i­mum viable prod­uct does not entail fly­ing any­where and trans­port­ing any­body or any­thing. We are plan­ning to start oper­a­tions and ser­vic­ing in our cho­sen city in Colom­bia between four to six years. But to get there we need to pave the way, and paving the way not only means the inte­gra­tion work on the tech­no­log­i­cal side which of course we’re car­ry­ing out, it means hav­ing the prop­er pub­lic accep­tance and a prop­er legal frame­work in which to oper­ate.

“So we’re set­ting out to do that right now. And there’s a very clear way how we are work­ing with sev­er­al dozens of part­ners and col­lab­o­ra­tors, even­tu­al ser­vice providers, tech­nol­o­gy providers and hard­ware providers — all the way from the air vehi­cles to air­space inte­gra­tion sys­tems, the ver­ti­port sys­tems ground sys­tems etc. It’s all across the board.

“And it’s by show­ing peo­ple what it is that we’re doing, how we’re doing it, who we’re doing it with and where these tech­nolo­gies are com­ing from. That’s what we need to achieve and that’s why we’re announc­ing these part­ner­ships and these col­lab­o­ra­tions.”

Q: In all the work you’ve done for Sky­scraper 2020, how much of an impact has the vir­tu­al sum­mit had going for­ward with these part­ner com­pa­nies and also, for poten­tial new ones which want to see what you want to achieve in Colom­bia?

FV: “It has been tremen­dous­ly pos­i­tive. That not only includes our exist­ing part­ners in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Unit­ed States, but it also involves new com­pa­nies and enti­ties reach­ing out to us and say­ing ‘I have this capa­bil­i­ty. We’re design­ing these sys­tems or we’re devel­op­ing these sys­tems, we want to be part of what you’re doing.’

“So we have seen a tremen­dous growth and real­ly encour­age that. Because there’s a cru­cial thing here. We’re all invent­ing a new indus­try. Col­lab­o­ra­tion is real­ly pick­ing up and we’re see­ing a lot of desire from every­one to work togeth­er in part­ner­ship. That’s fan­tas­tic because with­in urban mobil­i­ty, none of us are com­peti­tors. And when you think about it, it’s because the under­ly­ing prob­lem we’re try­ing to solve is not from with­in the avi­a­tion indus­try. Sky­scraper 2020 was tremen­dous­ly pos­i­tive to pro­pel build­ing and enhanc­ing our ecosys­tem.”

Q: Can you tell us more about the back­ground behind this joint col­lab­o­ra­tion with Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty?

FV: “We’re iden­ti­fy­ing the real poten­tial air vehi­cle providers. We will oper­ate more like an air­line, in terms of hav­ing dif­fer­ent vehi­cles depend­ing on the busi­ness case, the loca­tion of infra­struc­ture net­works and the con­fig­u­ra­tion required for the vehi­cles.

“For exam­ple, it is not the same to have a patient trans­porta­tion busi­ness between hos­pi­tals in Lima, Peru, which is sea lev­el, than a freight trans­porta­tion ser­vice in Bogo­ta which is very high ASL. Those will require dif­fer­ent con­fig­u­ra­tion of our vehi­cles, a dif­fer­ent capa­bil­i­ty in terms of alti­tude over sea lev­el and prob­a­bly pay­load capac­i­ty.

“We’re going to have one or anoth­er type of air vehi­cle, and we see about 400 dif­fer­ent ideas already. But it turns out that just a very small frac­tion of those are from com­pa­nies which are capa­ble of pro­vid­ing air vehi­cle fleets. Those which can under­go a prop­er aero­nau­tic design, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of their vehi­cle and pro­duc­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing air­craft.

“And that has to do with trace­abil­i­ty and a man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties, and then com­pa­nies which are able to sup­port its fleets in terms of MRO. So we have to iden­ti­fy which com­pa­nies promise to have those capa­bil­i­ties. And we have start­ed work­ing with those com­pa­nies includ­ing Jaunt, which is very inter­est­ing. So we’re very hap­py to work with them as it devel­ops its vehi­cle. There are a few out there already fly­ing and oper­at­ing, but it’s about being capa­ble of pro­vid­ing aero­nau­ti­cal-relat­ed air vehi­cle fleets. That capa­bil­i­ty is very impor­tant.

“So we are work­ing with them as they devel­op their vehi­cle, and as we devel­op the para­me­ters for oper­a­tion in which those air vehi­cles are intend­ed to oper­ate in. Our [trans­porta­tion] sys­tem is the ecosys­tem in which they will be oper­at­ing, and which prob­a­bly sev­er­al oth­er air vehi­cle brands are going to be oper­at­ing in. So we need to work with these OEMs in part­ner­ship from this moment to devel­op those para­me­ters and to make sure that the inte­gra­tion is actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing.

“The air vehi­cles will need to be oper­at­ed by real peo­ple that we will need to pro­vide, the air vehi­cles will need to ser­vice real cus­tomers — whether it’s for logis­tics, tourism etc., so we need to make sure that’s cor­rect­ly inte­grat­ed into the busi­ness mod­els for the pre­dic­tive busi­ness. These vehi­cles need to charge and we need to man­age them.

“That’s why it’s impor­tant to col­lab­o­rate with air vehi­cle and sub­sys­tem providers, aero­nau­tics sys­tems and air­space inte­gra­tion sys­tems, with ver­ti­port sys­tems, ground sys­tems and ener­gy sys­tems. All of those part­ner­ships are hap­pen­ing at Varon Vehi­cles.”

Q: Jaun­t’s Jour­ney eVTOL air­craft is cur­rent­ly on course to be oper­a­tional by 2026, so what will be hap­pen­ing before then between the two com­pa­nies?

FV: “We are very con­fi­dent that Jaun­t’s air­craft design is a vehi­cle that is prop­er­ly tar­get­ed to real urban air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions and intend to have it as part of our fleet. But before we actu­al­ly get there, we have to work togeth­er to achieve the legal frame­work and pub­lic accep­tance. We’re very con­fi­dent this part­ner­ship will sup­port us in achiev­ing that pub­lic accep­tance in the roadmap we have in our strat­e­gy.

“So we are work­ing togeth­er to col­lab­o­rate and show peo­ple what it is that we’re doing, why it is safe, what type of air vehi­cles these are, what types of ser­vices we’ll be able to pro­vide and what is the val­ue for mobil­i­ty and for peo­ple’s qual­i­ty of life that we can bring by using Jaun­t’s Jour­ney air­craft.

“We’re focus­ing on ways in which we can show them why these air vehi­cles make more envi­ron­men­tal sense, offer more urban appli­ca­tions than heli­copters, and why these vehi­cles are safe. Jaunt is a great part­ner and we’re look­ing for­ward to when we can dis­close what we’re going to be doing.”

Q: Can you tell us more about what the reac­tion is like in Colom­bia, and where you see the poten­tial advan­tages and chal­lenges? I under­stand the coun­try’s CAA is very sup­port­ive of Varon Vehi­cles.

FV: “We’ve always seen tremen­dous sup­port from the Colom­bian gov­ern­ment and civ­il avi­a­tion author­i­ty, Colom­bian Air Force, Colom­bian aero­nau­tics indus­try and from local part­ners in the coun­try. And they are part of our ecosys­tem. — it’s all of us mak­ing this hap­pen.

“We’re also see­ing the same thing region­al­ly, in Latin Amer­i­ca. Colom­bia is actu­al­ly lead­ing the way in terms of spear­head­ing the whole effort. As we enter our exhi­bi­tions phase, it’s all about show­ing and con­vey­ing the right mes­sage to peo­ple. There’s a lot of futur­is­tic think­ing and I love that because I’m a tech­nol­o­gy guy, but we have to con­vey real­is­tic mes­sages because oth­er­wise, we won’t cre­ate the prop­er grounds for what we are doing. Expec­ta­tions need to be man­aged prop­er­ly and it’s real­ly impor­tant that we trans­mit the right mes­sage.

“Part of the right mes­sage is: what is the prob­lem we’re try­ing to solve? We’re all from with­in the avi­a­tion indus­try box and tend to answer that it’s traf­fic. The solu­tion is that we’ll fly over the prob­lem. We think that’s a mis­take and the wrong assess­ment.

“At Varon Vehi­cles we believe that, at least in Latin Amer­i­ca, the urban sit­u­a­tion is quite unique. It’s very much unlike the USA and oth­er devel­oped coun­tries. Traf­fic, high pol­lu­tion lev­els, poor air qual­i­ty and inac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of cities and parts of cities — they are not the prob­lem, but symp­toms. We think the under­ly­ing prob­lem is a lack of mobil­i­ty infra­struc­ture.

“That’s why you do not see urban sprawl in Latin Amer­i­ca. That’s why you see very small, dense­ly packed cities with some of the worst mobil­i­ty prob­lems on the plan­et. It’s not the traf­fic. It’s not the air qual­i­ty. It’s because we don’t have over­whelm­ing­ly capa­ble gov­ern­ments able to pro­vide road sys­tems and metro sys­tems — we’re lack­ing that and this is the under­ly­ing prob­lem we’ve iden­ti­fied.

“It’s not an aero­nau­tics prob­lem, it’s a city devel­op­ment one and for us, Urban Air Mobil­i­ty is about pro­vid­ing the prop­er mobil­i­ty infra­struc­ture to alle­vi­ate that pres­sure for city growth. Gov­ern­ments in the region are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly inca­pable of pro­vid­ing that prop­er mobil­i­ty infra­struc­ture because of the immense — and impos­si­ble to achieve — cost of not only refur­bish­ing exist­ing road sys­tems but pro­vid­ing new phys­i­cal mobil­i­ty infra­struc­ture to allow cities to grow prop­er­ly.

“So here we come in and say we’re bring­ing a lega­cy from avi­a­tion, a new type of mobil­i­ty infra­struc­ture that does not require per-mile phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture. You can place an air­port in New York and one in Dubai, with­out need­ing to build any­thing in between and can fly to gen­er­ate the con­nec­tion. We’re say­ing to gov­ern­ments and urban devel­op­ers that we have a way to cre­ate new con­nec­tiv­i­ty, and just need to place ver­ti­ports here and there with­out the need to build any­thing phys­i­cal in between to gen­er­ate con­nec­tion.

“That’s where the poten­tial for dis­rup­tion lies and why we’re see­ing such pos­i­tive trac­tion and sup­port from Latin Amer­i­ca in gen­er­al. The deep prob­lem is here.”

Q: Can you expand more on the infra­struc­ture side of the ecosys­tem? There is a lot of focus on eVTOL air­craft and right­ly so, but infra­struc­ture is a vital part of the puz­zle which needs to be in place before the first ser­vices launch.

FV: “We believe the word infra­struc­ture, when seen with­in the aero­nau­tics box, is imme­di­ate­ly reflect­ed to refer to the ver­ti­ports. Because in avi­a­tion, the infra­struc­ture is the air­port. I think ter­mi­nol­o­gy is real­ly cru­cial in cre­at­ing our new indus­try. For exam­ple, what urban air mobil­i­ty is in the Unit­ed States is not real­ly urban in Latin Amer­i­ca, and region­al air mobil­i­ty in Latin Amer­i­ca isn’t real­ly region­al in the US, so there’s a fac­tor about ter­mi­nol­o­gy as we cre­ate this new indus­try.

“When we say infra­struc­ture, it is not the ver­ti­ports. We see urban air mobil­i­ty in its entire­ty as infra­struc­ture. It’s a new type of mobil­i­ty infra­struc­ture and the poten­tial for dis­rup­tion lies in the fact that it does not require phys­i­cal con­struc­tion per mile unlike road sys­tems and metro sys­tems where you need to build the roads, bridges, tun­nels, etc.

“There’s very high per mile cost in phys­i­cal mobil­i­ty infra­struc­ture, so here we come with this lega­cy from avi­a­tion and say we can approach the prob­lem in a dif­fer­ent way. We can gen­er­ate con­nec­tiv­i­ty with­out the need for per mile con­struc­tion and that’s where the poten­tial for dis­rup­tion lies. Not in avi­a­tion, but in mobil­i­ty infra­struc­ture.

“So we have a plan already set. But it’s not only about the air vehi­cles, as chal­leng­ing and cool as they are. They are a com­po­nent of the entire sys­tem. We are work­ing in lay­ing down the grounds of the air vehi­cles side, air­space inte­gra­tion archi­tec­ture side — which has a whole host of branch­es from weath­er sys­tems to route gen­er­at­ing sys­tems. Then to the ground sys­tems that include the ver­ti­port designs and ener­gy sys­tems.

“We are work­ing in pre-select­ed loca­tions in cities in Colom­bia. We’re work­ing on those air­space routes over cities. And we are prepar­ing every­thing to make this inte­gra­tion hap­pen between tech­nolo­gies. That’s why the pub­lic accep­tance and the legal frame­work strat­e­gy is an inte­gral part of our plan all the way to the time we start oper­at­ing.”

Q: Thanks, Felipe. Is there any­thing else you’d like to add?

FV: “It’s just about get­ting the right mes­sage out there in order to man­age expec­ta­tions and achieve pub­lic accep­tance. We have to be very real­is­tic and what we are doing is say­ing that urban air mobil­i­ty is some­thing that has to do with mobil­i­ty as a ser­vice, some­thing that will resem­ble more a metro sys­tem.

“We have ver­ti­ports instead of sta­tions, vir­tu­al lanes instead of tracks, and instead of trains we have our VTOL vehi­cle fleets ser­vic­ing between our ver­ti­ports. That in its entire­ty, is a new form of mobil­i­ty infra­struc­ture. It allows many dif­fer­ent poten­tial trans­porta­tion ser­vices to be pro­vid­ed to many sorts of dif­fer­ent cus­tomers — aer­i­al logis­tics chains, tourism — which is very impor­tant in Latin Amer­i­ca, law enforce­ment, gov­ern­ment appli­ca­tions, dis­as­ter relief, emer­gency response, med­ical uses, and many oth­ers.

“We’ll also be part­ner­ing with ride hail­ing com­pa­nies, through which we will be pro­vid­ing air taxi ser­vices for their end users. We are already hav­ing these con­ver­sa­tions, and air taxis are a big part of this large pool of poten­tial appli­ca­tions for urban air mobil­i­ty.”