Technology

Posted on September 11, 2018 by staff

Stealth start-up’s new drone ‘quadruples flight time’

Technology

A Californian drone manufacturer has introduced its latest product, the US-1.

The electric commercial-grade drone, built by Impossible Aerospace, has a flight time of up to two hours, which the company claims outperforms the approximate 25-minute single-charge flight time of other drones available today.

The team behind the new drone include world-class engineers, motor and battery experts from Tesla, SpaceX and other leading companies.

The US-1 is the first aircraft designed with a “battery-first approach,” which the company says is necessary to enable electric aircraft to compete with conventional fuel.

Impossible Aerospace has already begun selling its first units – equipped with optical and thermal sensors – to firefighters, police departments, and search and rescue teams across the U.S.

“The US-1 is more than just a drone. It’s the first aircraft designed properly from the ground up to be electric, using existing battery cells without compromise,” said Spencer Gore, CEO of Impossible Aerospace.

“It’s not so much an aircraft as it is a flying battery, leveraging an energy source that doubles as its primary structure. This is how electric aircraft must be built if they are to compete with conventional designs and displace petroleum fuels in aviation.”

The company’s latest $9.4 million Series A funding brings the total amount raised by Impossible Aerospace to over $11 million.

“From both a cost and environmental standpoint, the future of aviation is electric,” said Greg Reichow of Eclipse Ventures, one of the company’s investors.

“We invested in Impossible Aerospace because of their thoughtful and systematic approach to re-thinking the fundamentals of electric aircraft. Our first product, the US-1, outperforms existing solutions in a market crying out for reliable, domestically-manufactured long-duration aircraft, while validating the technology required to build aircraft of the future.”