REGENT Unveils Full-Scale Prototype of Electric-Powered Seaglider, Plans for 600,000 Sq. Ft Manufacturing Facility

Regent unveiled a full-scale pro­to­type of its elec­tric-pow­ered Viceroy seaglid­er last week (April 14th). The com­pa­ny also stat­ed it plans to con­struct a 600,000 sq ft man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty at its HQ in Rhode Island to ful­fil a USD8 bil­lion order book from 5 dif­fer­ent coun­tries, reports a press release. Regent, a com­pa­ny pio­neer­ing elec­tric seaglid­ers for sus­tain­able mar­itime trans­porta­tion, says it plans to flight test its Viceroy air­craft next year.

Regent seaglid­ers are a new cat­e­go­ry of mar­itime vehi­cle that com­bine the high speed of an air­plane with the low oper­at­ing cost of a boat. These all-elec­tric, zero-emis­sion ves­sels oper­ate exclu­sive­ly over water and use exist­ing dock infra­struc­ture to car­ry peo­ple and goods up to 180 miles with cur­rent bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy.

Fol­low­ing suc­cess­ful flights of the company’s quar­ter-scale pro­to­type last year, the mock-up rep­re­sents a vital next step in the con­struc­tion jour­ney for Regent. The com­pa­ny also announced it has tapped EP Sys­tems and MAG­i­cALL as key ven­dors for the bat­ter­ies and motors which will pow­er the prototype’s all-elec­tric dis­trib­uted propul­sion sys­tem.

Watch Video: “Regent’s hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed Seaglid­er is up, up and away”

Bil­ly Thal­heimer, Regent co-Founder and CEO, com­ment­ed, “Our stud­ies, based on pub­licly val­i­dat­ed data, show that our seaglid­ers serve an USD11 bil­lion mar­ket that we project to swell to as much as USD25 bil­lion as bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy advances. The USD8 bil­lion in orders our com­pa­ny has already received from a vari­ety of com­pa­nies around the world reflect the need for fast, reli­able, and sus­tain­able mar­itime trans­porta­tion.”

Last week’s unveil­ing comes dur­ing a peri­od of strong-growth for the com­pa­ny which has already pro­cured over USD50 mil­lion in fund­ing since its launch just two years ago. In the past few months, REGENT has announced the appoint­ment of aero­space doyens David Neele­man, co-founder of Breeze Air­ways, Jet­Blue, and Azul Air­lines, and Den­nis Muilen­burg, for­mer CEO of The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny, to its Board of Advi­sor; pro­cured strate­gic invest­ments from Japan Air­lines, Lock­heed Mar­tin, and Japan’s Yam­a­to Hold­ings, while con­tin­u­ing to build its order book to more than 500 seaglid­ers from an array of com­pa­nies includ­ing Brit­tany Fer­ries, FRS (Ger­many), Mesa Air­lines, Ocean Fly­er (New Zealand), and Mokulele Air­lines.

Regent also con­firmed that South­ern Airways/Mokulele Air­lines will receive the first com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger seaglid­ers once they come to mar­ket. Stan Lit­tle, Chair and CEO of South­ern Air­ways, com­ment­ed, “South­ern Air­ways has been work­ing toward the day when all of our fly­ing would be green. Dur­ing that time, we’ve been approached by dozens of com­pa­nies seek­ing our par­tic­i­pa­tion in their efforts. It was­n’t until we saw the work being done by Regent that we decid­ed to com­mit to an air­craft out­side our cur­rent fleet. The seaglid­er is tru­ly trans­for­ma­tive, and South­ern Air­ways is incred­i­bly proud to be the launch cus­tomer through our Mokulele brand.” 

Regent expects its first com­mer­cial Viceroy seaglid­ers to enter ser­vice by mid-decade.

For more infor­ma­tion

regentcraft.com