Speaker 1: Pushkin. The energy transition is here. It's upon us. The
Speaker 1: marginal cost of new solar and wind power is now
Speaker 1: below the marginal cost of new fossil fuel plants. Electric
Speaker 1: cars are amazing, Electric trucks are coming along. You know.
Speaker 1: The news really in some ways is better than I
Speaker 1: might have hoped for, say a decade ago. But planes,
Speaker 1: commercial airplanes, those are still a problem. As other sectors
Speaker 1: are decarbonizing, emissions from aviation are projected to triple by
Speaker 1: twenty fifty. This is partly because more people are flying
Speaker 1: every year, but it is also because figuring out how
Speaker 1: to build a commercial airplane that doesn't burn jet fuel
Speaker 1: is a very, very hard problem to solve. It may
Speaker 1: require combining frontier battery technology with a few tricks from
Speaker 1: the old dirty way of making planes fly. I'm Jacob Goldstein,
Speaker 1: and this is what's your problem. My guest today is
Speaker 1: Anders Forceland. He's the co founder and CEO of Heart Aerospace.
Speaker 1: Andrews problem is this, how do you build a commercial
Speaker 1: airplane that can fly on battery power and win the
Speaker 1: approval of regulators around the world. Andrews Forceland grew up
Speaker 1: in Sweden, got his PhD in aerospace product development there
Speaker 1: and he founded his company there, but he told me
Speaker 1: that the inspiration to start his company actually came from
Speaker 1: next door, came from Norway, and sort of early twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: Norway announces that they want all their all their short
Speaker 1: haul domestic flights to be one hundreds electric by twenty forty. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is like the first country in the world that
Speaker 1: puts forth a mandate like this, and Norway is doing
Speaker 1: this on the heels they're incredibly successful electrification of their
Speaker 1: road traffic where you know, the new cars are electric
Speaker 1: and also you know the ferry infrastructure at all. So
Speaker 1: they're like, we electrified the boats, we electrified the cars,
Speaker 1: but like, yeah, there's no electric plane that exists in
Speaker 1: the world. When they put out the man nothing is
Speaker 1: even close, right, Well, No, what's happened is that a
Speaker 1: lot of people have looked at at sort of what's
Speaker 1: happened with the electrification of the cars, like Tesla, and
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people that have looked at
Speaker 1: what's happened with the drones, like the consumer small drones,
Speaker 1: And there's a bunch of projects that are trying to
Speaker 1: build what's called urban air mobility, like small like vertical
Speaker 1: takeoff and landing aircraft essentially a flying car, basically a
Speaker 1: flying car. Yeah, this sort of George Jetson future, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but nobody's looking it's not really the right product for Norway.
Speaker 1: Norway's looking for something to replace there. They're sort of turboprops,
Speaker 1: they're thirty seaters. Yeah, so we're we create a company
Speaker 1: or first we started research project in Sweden to what
Speaker 1: are we gonna do about this in Sweden? It's part
Speaker 1: of it like hey, wait, we can't let the Norwegians
Speaker 1: out Green US. We can't let them out net zero
Speaker 1: US to keep up with them or well yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: It's really like that. You know, there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a brotherly competition, right. But but it's also that
Speaker 1: I'm recognizing that Sweden is always proud of itself, like
Speaker 1: were we have this great history in aerospace that goes
Speaker 1: back to the sort of Second World War and before that.
Speaker 1: But and we also have this you know, unique competence
Speaker 1: buility being built in electrifying cars and trucks. Like actually
Speaker 1: from the industry side side of something that Norway doesn't. Right,
Speaker 1: So I'm like, okay, maybe I can take this mandate.
Speaker 1: I can take this electromobility ecosystem in Sweden, and I
Speaker 1: can take the history in aerospace and sort of combine
Speaker 1: them into something and see what happens. So, just to
Speaker 1: be clear, you get some funding, right, Yeah, start hiring
Speaker 1: some people, you know, Yeah, and you're gonna build this
Speaker 1: nineteen seat plane powered by batteries and electric plane. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna and it's gonna do the thing Norway
Speaker 1: needs it to do exactly. Yeah, with the sort of
Speaker 1: philosophy of you know, the real innovation is getting it done.
Speaker 1: So you know, this is something that's so hard to do,
Speaker 1: even for a large OEM. So as the startup, you
Speaker 1: really have to be cautious of not being you know,
Speaker 1: biting off more than you can chew. Right, this idea
Speaker 1: of limiting innovation, you said you're going to limit innovation.
Speaker 1: That's interesting to me. What do you mean by that.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons that we have so many startups
Speaker 1: I want to be like, I think it's because it's
Speaker 1: easy to generate a realistic image of your vision. So
Speaker 1: you could make a picture of some crazy futuristic plane
Speaker 1: on your computer and say to investors, work, we're going
Speaker 1: to build this. You could do this for free. You
Speaker 1: can just draw your vision of the future in the
Speaker 1: sort of CGI and you can you can show it
Speaker 1: to people. But the challenge of an aircraft is that
Speaker 1: you need to prove that you won't have, you know,
Speaker 1: less than one serious incident in one hundred million hours.
Speaker 1: So you don't just need to build something that can fly,
Speaker 1: You need to build something that can fly essentially perfectly
Speaker 1: under every condition you can imagine, with everything going wrong.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's it's the most high bar to clear
Speaker 1: for any kind of manufactured thing you can imagine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, if you want to prove something,
Speaker 1: you say, how do you prove that this is not
Speaker 1: going to break in a hundred million hours? Right? And
Speaker 1: these is way to do that as saying, well, there's
Speaker 1: these flames flying around, they have the solution, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna do what they're doing. And then the certification authorities says, well,
Speaker 1: that's good enough. So you decide you just want to
Speaker 1: focus on the fuel essentially, right, switching from jet fuel
Speaker 1: to batteries, which is a very hard problem, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the things that maybe is just worth dwelling
Speaker 1: on for a moment. Is how amazingly energy dense jet
Speaker 1: fuel is? How good jet fuel is that doing the
Speaker 1: thing it needs to do? Right? I mean, one way
Speaker 1: to talk about it is sort of jet fuel has
Speaker 1: a specific energy density. You have about twelve thousand and
Speaker 1: water hours per kilo out right, and batteries right now
Speaker 1: on a cell level are approaching like four hundred. But
Speaker 1: you know a Tesla Model three is like two fifty.
Speaker 1: So wait, there's a lot of units in numbers there.
Speaker 1: But just to get the ratio is it? Are you
Speaker 1: saying jet fuel is about thirty times as energy dense
Speaker 1: as a battery. Yeah, thirty to forty times. So that's
Speaker 1: a huge problem for you. So for every pound, every
Speaker 1: kilogram of jet fuel, you get thirty times as much
Speaker 1: energy as you can get for a pound or a
Speaker 1: kilogram of battery. Like that seems like the fundamental problem
Speaker 1: you're up against, Yeah, it is. How do you deal
Speaker 1: with that problem? Like, as you're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to make a plane that's going to carry all
Speaker 1: this battery energy and fly, Like, how do you deal
Speaker 1: with that fundamental fact? So first of all, you try
Speaker 1: to make the plane as good as possible, and waste
Speaker 1: of doing that is actually building a plane with a
Speaker 1: large wing, make an entire plane a little bit larger
Speaker 1: because you're carrying more The weight of the batteries are
Speaker 1: more than the weight of the past. Basically, you've got
Speaker 1: to build more plane to carry all that battery. Is
Speaker 1: that right exactly? That's a really good way you're putting in.
Speaker 1: But then it's sort of boils down to philosophy, and
Speaker 1: this is I think where we are. You know, then
Speaker 1: you have to realize something about new technology and disruptive technology,
Speaker 1: and is that you should not compete with the existing
Speaker 1: technology on the merits of the assisting technology. So we're
Speaker 1: obviously not going to beat jet engines on range. We're
Speaker 1: just or ELEC jet fuel on range. So what can
Speaker 1: we work with? So what we can do is we
Speaker 1: can have zero emissions, we can have a low noise,
Speaker 1: we can have zero local pollution, which is a big
Speaker 1: problem at airports, and we can have superior unit economics
Speaker 1: because we're replacing not only you know, the jet engine
Speaker 1: is the most expensive part of the plane, and you're
Speaker 1: replacing that with a simple electric motor that essentially has
Speaker 1: one moving part. So okay, so you're designing this plane
Speaker 1: in Sweden. You're thinking about the Norwegian mark kid, But
Speaker 1: then one day you get an email from United Airlines
Speaker 1: in the US. Right. It came through our infomail, and
Speaker 1: we were so close to missing it. It was like
Speaker 1: one of those times, you mean, like they just they
Speaker 1: just emailed you at like the generic at the jet email,
Speaker 1: somebody from United Airlines. Yeah, among with all this, and
Speaker 1: you're like and Clara, I god bless her. She was
Speaker 1: looking through it and she was like, you know, is
Speaker 1: this actually something? And then we stood up the call
Speaker 1: and it was like, oh, it's actually the real, real guys, right,
Speaker 1: And we asked them like, okay, you know, we talked
Speaker 1: about this market in Norway, the propeller aircraft, the sort
Speaker 1: of thirty seaters, and we like, give line an aircraft
Speaker 1: like that, and they said, no, not a single one.
Speaker 1: But if you go back to the nineteen nineties, they
Speaker 1: flew hundreds of these aircraft. Okay. So we start telling
Speaker 1: the story about you know, we think that actually it
Speaker 1: might be the jet engine, that it's a little bit
Speaker 1: too expensive, and they're like, are you kidding? You know,
Speaker 1: it is our biggest driver of costs. We pay so
Speaker 1: much for our maintenance of the jet engines. So here
Speaker 1: we are with this value proposition that we've sort of
Speaker 1: from a sort of an academic point of view put forth,
Speaker 1: and then we have one of the biggest airlines in
Speaker 1: the verse just validating that for us and telling you
Speaker 1: it's actually much worse, do you think? Huh? And by
Speaker 1: worse that means better for you, right, I mean the yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that worse than you think means they actually want to
Speaker 1: buy this thing you're trying to make. And they put
Speaker 1: on an order, right, Like, what is the deal you
Speaker 1: wind up making with them? So we end up actually
Speaker 1: they place an order some United in Masa Eage place
Speaker 1: an order of one hundred aircraft plus an option for
Speaker 1: initial fifty each, so we get like two hundred aircraft.
Speaker 1: They both invest in our company. And just one thing
Speaker 1: I want to clarify MESA is they're not a known
Speaker 1: sort of name brand, right. They operate small flights for
Speaker 1: other airlines, Is that right? Like? Which airlines that I
Speaker 1: would have heard of? Do they run flights for? They
Speaker 1: operate for among other things, Like one of their big
Speaker 1: customers is United and they operate as United Express. So okay,
Speaker 1: Anders has his big order from United and Mason. He
Speaker 1: has his vision, which I love. I'm gonna say it again,
Speaker 1: the real innovation is getting it done. But he is
Speaker 1: about to run into really quite a large problem that's
Speaker 1: coming up after the break. Now back to the show.
Speaker 1: Last year, Anders and his team hit a wall. It
Speaker 1: was thankfully a metaphorical wall. They didn't crash into anything,
Speaker 1: but it was still a lot to worry about. They
Speaker 1: started to realize that their nineteen seat all electric plane
Speaker 1: just was not going to pencil out. They could get
Speaker 1: it to fly, but in a way with a commercial airplane.
Speaker 1: That's the easy part. They probably even could have made
Speaker 1: it work commercially in Norway, but the US, the United
Speaker 1: States has this rule that requires planes to keep a
Speaker 1: lot of reserve power in case they have to you know,
Speaker 1: circle the runway reroute to a distant airport. And the
Speaker 1: US rules of reserve power meant that anders nineteen seat
Speaker 1: plane could only use like a third of its battery
Speaker 1: on ordinary flights, could only fly one hundred nautical miles.
Speaker 1: They had to keep the rest of the power in reserve,
Speaker 1: and such a short range was just way too short
Speaker 1: for that plane to be practical for it to work
Speaker 1: as a commercial airplane. So a few months ago, after
Speaker 1: years of work that cost millions and millions of dollars,
Speaker 1: Anders and his team trash their old plan for that
Speaker 1: nineteen seat plane. They threw it in the garbage, and
Speaker 1: they made a couple counterintuitive moves. One, they actually made
Speaker 1: their plane bigger. They went from one that carried nineteen
Speaker 1: people to one that carried thirty people. And two, they
Speaker 1: decided that their planes would carry a little bit of
Speaker 1: jet fuel to solve that reserve problems. So in the
Speaker 1: new vision, this thirty seat plane, they could still fly
Speaker 1: on batteries, would still fly on batteries, but in an
Speaker 1: emergency or for longer flights, the jet fuel could power
Speaker 1: a generator that would charge up the batteries give them
Speaker 1: more power. There was a lot I wanted to know
Speaker 1: about this shift starting with this. Really was it hard
Speaker 1: to look at all that time and money you spent
Speaker 1: working on the nineteenth seater and say, ah, you know, sorry,
Speaker 1: that was a mistake. We need to build a different plane. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of the you know, the stuff
Speaker 1: that we've done was very just transferable, Like all the
Speaker 1: words we've done on on avionics, on flight controls, propulsion,
Speaker 1: it was very like, okay, we've changed a little bit
Speaker 1: to that dimension. The wire has become a little bit longer.
Speaker 1: But it was like the same stuff, right. The only
Speaker 1: thing that we really had to throw away was the
Speaker 1: structural design, and we'd actually even built like it sounds
Speaker 1: that sounds non trivial, but we did have in our
Speaker 1: hanger we had a full scale model, representative model of
Speaker 1: this ES nineteen structure that we've just built and just completed.
Speaker 1: We haven't adn't really completed it, but we've built which
Speaker 1: was going to be this basic for this integrated test
Speaker 1: facility that we were building. That then you have to
Speaker 1: say to everybody who just built model, you know, sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: I got some bad news. Yeah. And I was like,
Speaker 1: by the way, we built this in about a year.
Speaker 1: Now you have to tear it down and you have
Speaker 1: to build a new one that's bigger in about two months,
Speaker 1: because in September we're announcing this to the work. How
Speaker 1: did that go over? Well? Surprisingly well. I think they
Speaker 1: became very crafty and they were like, okay, we can
Speaker 1: move the wing out. We can like they figured a
Speaker 1: little bit waste of actually doing a lot of little
Speaker 1: bit of reuse and they had a lot of lessons
Speaker 1: learned from building this structure. Okay, okay, but you know
Speaker 1: this is the startup life, right, So okay, so now
Speaker 1: you have just as of September, as of a couple
Speaker 1: months ago, you have a new sort of plan. Right,
Speaker 1: instead of a nineteen seat all electric power plane, it's
Speaker 1: going to be a thirty seat plane. It's going to
Speaker 1: be primarily powered by electric motors, but you're going to
Speaker 1: have this jet fuel power auxiliary power unit that gets
Speaker 1: you your reserve power. Right, So for most flights you
Speaker 1: can fly on the battery, but in a pinch, you
Speaker 1: can fire up the jet fuel. What do you have
Speaker 1: to do to get from that idea to having a
Speaker 1: plane that actually is in commercial service? So an aircraft
Speaker 1: is a lego kit of different parts coming together from
Speaker 1: different different suppliers. So it's really we start by then
Speaker 1: hiring a critical mass of engineers that know everything from
Speaker 1: you know, mechanical systems such as landing gear to flight controls,
Speaker 1: to avionics, to electrical systems obviously the electric propulsion structures,
Speaker 1: and they start then interacting with the worldwide supply chain network,
Speaker 1: you know, start going to different places looking at flight controls,
Speaker 1: or avionics stuff, and were you already doing that on
Speaker 1: the nineteen seater and does that transfer to the thirty seater? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were already in that process. And I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: I need to make the call myself. I need to
Speaker 1: call my suppliers and say, by the way, guys, you know,
Speaker 1: change your plan. You know. The thing that scared me
Speaker 1: the most about this was not the sort of, oh,
Speaker 1: having to redo the structural work. It was the sort
Speaker 1: of we have to go out and say that, by
Speaker 1: the way, we've been really confident about this nineteen seater
Speaker 1: and we actually think that we were wrong. Right, So
Speaker 1: we end up making this call and we go through
Speaker 1: this is the analysis we've done, This is the tradeoffs
Speaker 1: we've done. We're actually thinking that, you know, we have
Speaker 1: to make this shift, and if we have to do it,
Speaker 1: we have to do it now, all right. And we
Speaker 1: do this with suppliers, we do this with airlines, and
Speaker 1: you know, everybody is like, yeah, this is what you
Speaker 1: should be doing, right, So we don't get any of
Speaker 1: that sort of backlash that we would have expected. Okay,
Speaker 1: but the thing that we want to enable is to
Speaker 1: understand the aircraft are not just products. Their platforms. Right.
Speaker 1: The Boeing seven three seven is a platform that came
Speaker 1: out in nineteen sixty nine and people are still flying
Speaker 1: it and there's no plans of building a new replacement
Speaker 1: for by Boing. So we wanted to create that platform
Speaker 1: where all these new technology can come together and and
Speaker 1: sort of bring to market. But the exciting thing about
Speaker 1: that is that you get these two hundred kilometer range
Speaker 1: at twenty twenty eight or you know, and then you
Speaker 1: start replacing the batteries. You do that with a new
Speaker 1: technology every two years or so, and you actually can grow.
Speaker 1: But first you got to get to twenty twenty eight
Speaker 1: at a plane that can actually fly, right, Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I want to just talk a little bit about what
Speaker 1: it takes to get from here to there. Right, that's
Speaker 1: just over five years, So, I mean there's a few
Speaker 1: there's sort of the technical questions. There's the financial questions, Like,
Speaker 1: so one is how much money do you have and
Speaker 1: how much money is it going to cost to get
Speaker 1: to having a plane that can fly commercially in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty eight. It's about a billion dollar project, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're about one tenth of that, right, So it's also
Speaker 1: a continuous fundraise and it's getting harder to raise money
Speaker 1: in general. I don't know what your situation is, but
Speaker 1: it clearly the sort of funding environment is now much
Speaker 1: harder than it was a year ago. Are you Is
Speaker 1: that a problem for you? I mean, I think we're
Speaker 1: seeing a prepared of sort of the HYPESI like, a
Speaker 1: natural point in the hype cycle of this technology. And
Speaker 1: obviously you know the market has its oscillations, but I
Speaker 1: would also say that that I think climate tech is
Speaker 1: one of those things that people are still very interested
Speaker 1: in funding and and you know, this is not a
Speaker 1: problem that's going away, right, So we're on this. So
Speaker 1: so there's there's the money, and you need to raise
Speaker 1: a lot more money, and then there's the like the
Speaker 1: technical side. I mean, is there some particular technical problem
Speaker 1: that you're working on that we can talk about in
Speaker 1: a way that's not too technical, but that like gets
Speaker 1: because like what you're trying to do is hard, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's clearly a hard problem, and so is there
Speaker 1: some piece of it that sort of shows that the
Speaker 1: broader challenges? I think that building aircraft is like a
Speaker 1: generalist problem, right, It's a hundred different things that you
Speaker 1: need to do just from a technology point of view,
Speaker 1: and it's not the best performing of these technologies that
Speaker 1: can get to decide your success. It's the worst performing. Right.
Speaker 1: If you build an aircraft by twenty twenty twenty eight,
Speaker 1: and you've done everything brilliantly, but you forgot to do
Speaker 1: landing gear, you're not going to take off, right, or
Speaker 1: something much smaller. Right, there's a million little things like
Speaker 1: you're not going to get the landing get but there
Speaker 1: might just be one little connection between two different systems
Speaker 1: or something, right, Yeah, I mean that there's there's many
Speaker 1: of stories like that, So everything needs to be like
Speaker 1: it's like it's like the worst link of the chain
Speaker 1: is what's going to break it. Yeah, And it's not
Speaker 1: just goes for the technical stuff. It goes from the
Speaker 1: commercial stuff. You know, it's infrastructure on the ground. It
Speaker 1: is yeah, you know, a regulatory it's all of these things.
Speaker 1: The infrastructure on the ground is a particular if that's
Speaker 1: a whole thing for you, right, because there's all this
Speaker 1: infrastructure in place at every airport to put jet fuel
Speaker 1: into airplanes, but there is not infrastructure in place to
Speaker 1: recharge the batteries of airplanes because that's not a thing, right, So,
Speaker 1: and presumably if these are little commuter planes or a
Speaker 1: little small short hop planes, you're gonna have to recharge
Speaker 1: them fast, right. You can't just like plug it in
Speaker 1: and leave it overnight. So is that is that a
Speaker 1: technical problem? Like how long does it take to recharge
Speaker 1: one of your planes or no, I mean it's it
Speaker 1: is about a thirty minute recharge, okay, And that is
Speaker 1: not a technical problem and definitely not from the charger
Speaker 1: point of view. We're looking at something that has the
Speaker 1: same standard. The news sort of standard that's from for
Speaker 1: electric trucks, which is, you know, goes up to three megawats,
Speaker 1: is like the MCS standard, which is you know it's
Speaker 1: going to be like okay, if you can build put
Speaker 1: it on a truck stop, you can put it on
Speaker 1: an airport. Electric trucks mean big big mac trucks, big
Speaker 1: big tractor trailers. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, here's a big one.
Speaker 1: Are the batteries just too big and heavy? Where? Like,
Speaker 1: are you sure that that's going to be fine? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean they are big, they're heavy. There's certification problems.
Speaker 1: That's going to limit my market size, right, it's not
Speaker 1: going to limit if it flies or not. Okay, we'll
Speaker 1: build an aircraft and if the batteries become a little
Speaker 1: bit of heavier, we have to compromise a little bit
Speaker 1: on an all electric range and then we'll get to
Speaker 1: the new battery two years later. Right. So it is
Speaker 1: it is not thing that I think is an existential
Speaker 1: risk for this, right, It's not something that I think
Speaker 1: it's that being problem. It's more about figuring out whatever
Speaker 1: is the state of the art battery technology that's out
Speaker 1: there and save the automotive industry or other industries. How
Speaker 1: do you bring that through the solsage machine of actually
Speaker 1: building then eleation cell. Yeah, and how do we I
Speaker 1: think that is the problem. But remember there are already
Speaker 1: certified electric aircraft out there, certified in Europe which is
Speaker 1: the Pipistol values Electro So two seater electric aircraft are
Speaker 1: already flying. Okay, so we know you can have a
Speaker 1: battery powered plane that works and that is safe enough
Speaker 1: for regulators to approve it. So there is some threshold
Speaker 1: that has been cleared. It is definitely a challenging problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of challenges, but it's not the sort
Speaker 1: of challenge in the sort of winning Nobo price. If
Speaker 1: you solve it an aerospace program, it's more like an
Speaker 1: organizational problem that it is like just technical. It's like
Speaker 1: getting people that are working on various systems to exactly
Speaker 1: be on the same page that every every page of
Speaker 1: the project, figuring out all the interfaces. These are not
Speaker 1: trivial stuff, right, So that's not something that need that
Speaker 1: we can understate how difficult it is to build that
Speaker 1: organization and execute on everything at the same time. Right,
Speaker 1: these are going to be the critical defining decades for
Speaker 1: this industry. We have the climate challenge, which is the
Speaker 1: biggest challenge we ever faced, but we also have a
Speaker 1: challenge where they're not enough new planes being built. The
Speaker 1: big aerospace companies are still building their old aircraft. So
Speaker 1: we need to create a culture of actually building new planes,
Speaker 1: building them faster. And also there's mass retirements in the industry.
Speaker 1: You know, there's people leaving the industry, there's new people
Speaker 1: coming in, and we just need to keep the flame alive,
Speaker 1: and we need to find the flame as much as
Speaker 1: we can create. Which is a bad analogy, by the way,
Speaker 1: for somebody that wants to get rid of combustion. I
Speaker 1: didn't think of that in general. A bad analogy for aviation.
Speaker 1: If you're building planes, stay away from fire metaphors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, Yeah. We'll be back in a minute with
Speaker 1: questions about airports. Abba and Andrew's favorite inventor. It's the
Speaker 1: lightning round, which probably also not a great metaphor to
Speaker 1: use in a show about planes. That's the end of
Speaker 1: the ads. Now we're going back to the show. We
Speaker 1: want to finish with a sort of lightning round. I
Speaker 1: want to just ask you a bunch of fast questions.
Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite airport? Wow, I just landed
Speaker 1: at Saint Louis Obispo Airport. I say that was the
Speaker 1: best airport experience that I had in my life. And
Speaker 1: in California, a little town in the middle. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like this glamorized bus stop. You just get off
Speaker 1: and you walk through it like a nice restaurant, and
Speaker 1: then you have your luggage waiting for you. In to
Speaker 1: the ad and I went to the rental car and
Speaker 1: I was like ten minutes I was in my car.
Speaker 1: It was just marvelous. That's the experience we want to bring, right,
Speaker 1: that's the beauty of a small local airport. Right. I
Speaker 1: used to live in Bozeman, Montana and the airport there
Speaker 1: was amazing like that, Yeah, it's lovely. And then I
Speaker 1: and then I dropped the same car off at Lax
Speaker 1: and it's like, you know, you you drop the car
Speaker 1: off and you get on a bus. And then he
Speaker 1: was like, I have to go to terminals seven and
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, it takes me, you know, hours.
Speaker 1: So your vision, your vision of flying is San Luis Obispo,
Speaker 1: not Lax. Yeah, exactly. What's one piece of advice you'd
Speaker 1: give to someone trying to solve a hard problem? Um,
Speaker 1: ask for help. Yeah. A good founder is or a
Speaker 1: good entrepreneurs want to know who to ask because people
Speaker 1: have had the same problem before. Who's your favorite inventor?
Speaker 1: I am obsessed with Kelly Johnson from SKO skunk Work.
Speaker 1: I don't know about Kelly Johnson. Tell me a little bit.
Speaker 1: Kelly Johnson was this marvelous engineer that led Luckeed skunk Works,
Speaker 1: you know, the proverbial skunk works that was like, you know,
Speaker 1: ten times smaller than the other teams. And he built
Speaker 1: a playing this or seventy one that flew at mocked
Speaker 1: three point two right, and it flew. They did very fast.
Speaker 1: To be clear, if that means very very fast, yeah,
Speaker 1: it means very fast. It's like an aircraft from the
Speaker 1: future that was built in nineties sixties by this little
Speaker 1: group of people kind of working off to the side
Speaker 1: of the main company. Yeah. Yeah, And they didn't have computers,
Speaker 1: they didn't have cad they drew drew stuff by hand,
Speaker 1: and they built something that there's no you know, there's
Speaker 1: no aerospace team that could have ever done that today.
Speaker 1: And it's just so remarkable. And it was also just
Speaker 1: a pace of it or you know, it's the pace
Speaker 1: of innovation, right that was astounding. That's what we need
Speaker 1: to get better at. You have a favorite Abba song?
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I'm being pigeoned. Oh less sweet? I will
Speaker 1: say my favorite is and this you can read in
Speaker 1: what you will with this, but it is the Winner
Speaker 1: Takes it All? Okay, very good? Can we end with that?
Speaker 1: Anders Forceland is the co founder and CEO of Heart Aerospace,
Speaker 1: and you know, the Winner Takes It All is a
Speaker 1: genius pick for an entrepreneur's favorite Abba song, but in fact,
Speaker 1: the Winner does not take it all. One of the
Speaker 1: great things about technological innovation is you get these widespread
Speaker 1: beneficial effects. If Anders and his company do succeed in
Speaker 1: making a commercially viable electric plane, we can all be
Speaker 1: better off. Or, as Abba might put it, the winner
Speaker 1: gets to win, but others can join in. Everyone can
Speaker 1: gain from an electric plane. Today's show was produced by
Speaker 1: Edith Russolo, edited by Robert Smith, and engineered by Amanda Kay.
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein. One last note, we are taking a
Speaker 1: few weeks off, so happy holidays, Happy New Year. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for listening to the show this year,
Speaker 1: and we will be back in January with more episodes
Speaker 1: of What's Your Problem.