REGENT begins next phase of full-scale Seaglider prototype development

REGENT Craft has begun hard­ware and sys­tems inte­gra­tion of its full-scale seaglid­er pro­to­type, rep­re­sent­ing a key step for­ward in the company’s jour­ney to rev­o­lu­tionise region­al coastal mobil­i­ty.

The Viceroy seaglid­er pro­to­type will pro­vide tech­ni­cal val­i­da­tion of full-scale oper­a­tions and offer the world’s first oppor­tu­ni­ty for a human to expe­ri­ence seaglid­er trav­el.

Over the next few months, REGENT will be assem­bling major struc­tur­al com­po­nents and installing the crit­i­cal onboard sys­tems, includ­ing motors, bat­ter­ies, elec­tron­ics, mechan­i­cal sys­tems, and vehi­cle con­trol soft­ware. REGENT will begin sea tri­als with humans on board lat­er this year.

Bil­ly Thal­heimer, Co-Founder and CEO, REGENT, said: “We’re mov­ing more quick­ly than any oth­er advanced elec­tric mobil­i­ty plat­form to cre­ate the world’s first pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing seaglid­er.

“We’ve proven seaglid­ers can suc­cess­ful­ly float, foil, and fly — the inte­gra­tion phase is a major moment that brings us clos­er to expe­ri­enc­ing float, foil, and fly first­hand.  I’m look­ing for­ward to get­ting onboard myself.”    

Seaglider Progress

After com­ing up with the idea for the seaglid­er in 2020, REGENT designed and oper­at­ed a quar­ter-scale pro­to­type over a peri­od of 18 months, con­duct­ing hun­dreds of hours of on-water tests and demon­strat­ing the world’s first seaglid­er flight. Last spring, the com­pa­ny unveiled a full-scale seaglid­er mock­up.

Over the past year, REGENT has been devel­op­ing and con­duct­ing rig­or­ous tests of the seaglid­er sub­sys­tems both in phys­i­cal and emu­lat­ed tests. REGENT takes advan­tage of dig­i­tal twin tech­nol­o­gy to sim­u­late real-world test­ing and will ver­i­fy these tests on the water with our first full-scale seaglid­er pro­to­type.

“Our abil­i­ty to meet our ambi­tious goals is a tes­ta­ment to the hard work and diverse exper­tise of our engi­neer­ing team,” said Mike Klink­er, Co-Founder and CTO, REGENT. “It’s excit­ing to see all the struc­tures and sys­tems come togeth­er quick­ly and safe­ly to make our first full-scale seaglid­er pro­to­type a real­i­ty.”

Prototype Testing Approval

REGENT recent­ly received approval from the U.S. Coast Guard for its Nav­i­ga­tion­al Safe­ty Risk Assess­ment, which allows the com­pa­ny to test the pro­to­type in Nar­ra­gansett Bay and Rhode Island Sound. This fol­lowed an exten­sive third-par­ty analy­sis of nav­i­ga­tion­al safe­ty and con­sul­ta­tion with more than 20 local stake­hold­ers on envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns and eco­nom­ic impacts from oper­a­tions.

REGENT will test the pro­to­type in its three modes: float­ing on the hull at the dock and in speed-restrict­ed water­ways, foil­ing on wave-tol­er­ant hydro­foils in marked chan­nels and com­mer­cial­ly nav­i­ga­ble water­ways, and fly­ing over the open water in ground effect, always stay­ing with­in one wingspan of the sur­face of the water.

Growing Global Demand

Accord­ing to a recent glob­al sur­vey, 86% of coastal res­i­dents would be inter­est­ed in using a seaglid­er for region­al coastal trav­el.

REGENT has secured more than 600 seaglid­er orders val­ued at more than $9 bil­lion from lead­ing air­line, fer­ry, freight and lessor oper­a­tors around the world.