INTERVIEW: Grasshopper Air Mobility on redefining automated drone logistics for efficient last-mile deliveries


While the race to launch commercial eVTOL aircraft operations moves closer to the finish line, it’s also nice to go back to the beginning and speak with companies which are just starting out on their journey.

One such company is Grasshopper Air Mobility. The Barcelona-based startup has got some exciting plans on the horizon and is releasing the design concept for its e350 Flying Cargo Van at the city’s New Economy Week today (Thursday).

The e350 is an electric, fully autonomous VTOL drone capable of transporting one pallet of up to 350kg at 220km/h over 200 km fully electric, or 600 km hybrid hydrogen-electric, delivering goods over 100km in just under 30 minutes.

Grasshopper Air Mobility says that what sets the e350 apart is its ability to transition from flying to driving by folding its wings, allowing for efficient last-mile ground navigation.

The e350 autonomously lands vertically, drives to the final destination, enters warehouses or factories, and handles automated loading, unloading, and charging of its specialized Cargo Containers via a Charging and Loading Station (CLS) — all without human intervention.

Credit Grasshopper Air Mobility

It’s an exciting time for founder Jakob Saalfrank and his team, as they plan to put themselves on the map and begin to attract investors into their proposition.

eVTOL Insights’ Executive Editor Jason Pritchard spoke with Jakob about the journey so far and how the company’s planned product will work.

Thanks for talking to me, Jakob, and good to catch up again. It’s an exciting month for you and the team. Can you share more details?

Jakob Saalfrank: “Hi Jason, it’s a pleasure to speak with you! I am so excited to tell you that we’re releasing our concept to the public. We’re updating our website and now the big goal is to find clients. In the AAM world, that’s the chicken and egg problem; either you’re getting investors first or clients.

“Initially, we wanted to get into the passenger market, but found you have to spend $2 billion before certifying a vehicle and before you can actually prove your business model. We’ve got our fingers crossed for the likes of Lilium, Volocopter, Archer etc. but the point is, no-one knows how it will work. It’s a bet on the future.

“We’re actually targeting automated industries; companies which already have systems in their warehouses and factories, because our drone will connect directly to their systems. But it’s very difficult if you don’t have any visuals to show. We had to develop our CONOPS, operational cost and so on.

“That is more or less done, which is why we’re going public. We’re based in Barcelona and Spanish news outlets are covering this [Advanced Air Mobility] a bit. It’s about starting off on the right foot and ideally until the end of the year, we’ll capture client interest and have a strategic partner to support us in our product development.

“Our goal is to find one or multiple partners to be able to say we need X amount of vehicles in order to do this kind of logistics system, and then we can go to an investor. This is the approach we’re going for.

Can you tell us more about that ‘lightbulb moment’ when you wanted to launch Grasshopper Air Mobility?

JS: “The very first moment actually came after High School. I’ve always said I would like to positively influence society in some shape, way or form. After university and travelling the world, I worked for an intra-logistics company SSI Schaefer, which develops automated warehouses.

“I moved to Austria and was living in Graz, with the company headquarters 20 kilometres outside of the city so I had to commute every morning. It took me one hour and was a horrible connection; a bus, plus a train then a 20-minute walk. I didn’t want to own my own car and even if I did, it would have taken 30 to 40 minutes to drive.

“I thought to myself ‘why don’t flying cars exist and why could I not do this?’ I always believe if you’re aiming at the top of the tree, you might get to the lower branch. But if you’re aiming for the moon, you might even get to the top of the tree. So that’s why I said I’m gonna go for the biggest idea that might seem crazy, but still could be possible to achieve.

This is why this idea never left my mind. I wanted to develop a shared mobility service of a car that can actually drive and fly. The goal should be that I can use it and my grandfather can use it as well. My vision is that when I’m at home in the morning and need to get to work, I open the application which tells me the nearest vehicle I can enter.

I’m driving to a take-off spot, then I’m autonomously flying to the nearest landing spot and finally I’m driving the last mile. It needs to work with these takeoff and landing spots, because I don’t think it’s viable for everybody to just take off and land anywhere.

It was then during a vacation that I said to myself: ‘Why am I working in a job that I don’t like? You only have one life, follow your dream.’ So after coming back to Austria, I quit my job and moved to Barcelona, founded a company and secured some freelance work which gave me a stable income but also free time to focus on my passion project.

Working in startups is great, but founding your own company is a whole different thing. Nobody tells you really what to do. I began writing a pitch deck, attended some entrepreneurship events and went to last year’s Paris Air Show. I started talking to all these AAM companies and accelerators and asked them ‘what do you need from me to be interesting’. They said three things: a product, a team and traction.’

So I started the project with a load of people who applied to be co-founders of the business and had a big meeting. We started to investigate the solution; it certainly wasn’t going to be a passenger eVTOL in the near-term. This would be something we would explore in the future, but we want to develop that technology. What would make sense in that context?

We looked at all the other cargo drones and saw none of them actually solved that last mile problem, nor incorporated industrial automation. And so that’s when we decided to do everything autonomous. We’re doing autonomous flight, autonomous drive, automated loading, automated unloading, automated charging. There will be no humans involved and instead focus on ‘Industry 4.0’.

With our design, we can carry 350kg over 200 kilometres. Looking at the whole industry, other RAM cargo companies are travelling about 800 to 1,500km, and then you’ve got the Urban Air Mobility vehicles which are within 20 to 50 kilometres. So we said we also need to get into the range and additionally alleviate the weight issue that electric mobility brings. Therefore, we’re also starting to investigate hydrogen, and now we understand that with this technology we can actually get to 600km.

We have deeply analysed the market of companies which use industrial automation. It is a great niche because no other cargo company can target these — we’re the only one with a dedicated value proposition for them. Plus, I have a background in that exact industry and know all the intricacies. Now we’ve got the stage ready to present, move forward and look for clients, before moving on to investors. And this is the story from a crazy idea, living in Austria, to a high-tech automated cargo drone.”

How would the drone work when it is operational? Can you give me an idea of the process?

JS: “Our customer would need to own their own warehouse or factory. And probably at least in the initial stages, would have to have either a just-in-time manufacturing need or pharmaceutical product. Something that is urgent. Because we are going to be somewhere on the range between a truck and a helicopter. The truck is the most universal logistics tool for any goods,
and the helicopter is the high price, high-speed tool that you only use in emergencies.

“We want to be a little bit more regular. So what our system requires is a so-called CLS (Charging and Loading Station). This needs to be set up at the client side. So it could be, for instance, regional distribution. Let’s imagine in Barcelona, at the airport there are various CLS stations.

“At the CLS station, you would have a cargo container. This cargo container contains the batteries and so they are charging as the drone isn’t there. They’re being loaded as the plane lands as fast as possible, then our drone might already be waiting. It picks up one of these charged and loaded containers, drives away, flies from the vertiport on the client side, to a warehouse within a 200 to 600 kilometre range.

“It lands outside at a predefined landing spot, i.e. a vertiport or heliport, and drives inside. The drone has foldable wings and propulsion, so after landing, we’re folding the wings inside to fit into the warehouse environment. It then turns around, reverses onto an empty CLS station and we drop the container there. We’re driving to another CLS station, picking up the next cargo container — ideally already loaded — driving out and flying away.

“For the system to work efficiently, there should always be some sort of goods to move. Ideally, all the players in the supply chain have these CLS stations, and we also need to have competitive prices, so that it does make sense for the clients to use us. It doesn’t make sense to move potatoes or apples, but it might make sense for large amounts of pharmaceutical products or manufacturing components. This is essentially how it will work.”

  
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