By Srinath Srinivasan
Incubated by IIT incubation cell at IIT Madras Research Park, The ePlane Company began by IIT Madras professor Satya Chakravarthy and his student, Pranjal Mehta, aims to make electric planes for civilian transportation inside cities, enabling door-to-door, or rather roof-to-roof, travel. The corporation is set to commence testing initial models from July 2021 and has lately raised an undisclosed quantity in seed funding from investors such as Speciale Invest, IIM Ahmedabad’s CIIE.CO, FirstCheque, JavaCapital and Sharechat co-founder Farid Ahsan.
“When the final product is out, it can reduce intra-city travel to 10-15 minutes. The cost initially will be ~1.5x the road taxis but will eventually come down to a similar rate as road taxis,” says Mehta, co-founder & CEO, The ePlane Company. Today, there are pretty handful of providers globally working on a comparable concept.
“We are not building yet another drone that hovers. We want to replace combustion engine with an electric engine, and the aircraft will have wings which will ensure long, efficient and safe flight,” says Chakravarthy, co-founder & CTO, who is overseeing the crucial style of the aircraft. The automobile is anticipated to have a 200-km variety which and a style that suits the Indian circumstances. “The design and technology will be 100% localised and in-house. We will also try to localise sourcing materials and manufacturing as much as possible,” adds Chakravarthy.
The air taxis will want a pilot and will not be autonomous proper from the 1st launch. It will also be in a two-seater configuration, maintaining the size compact and enabling rooftop landings. “Air travel requires trust. Making it autonomous will make people tense and for that reason we will have a trained pilot. It is also possible to explore autonomous options but we will stay away from it for a really long time in transporting civilians,” says Chakravarthy.
While the applications of this technologies is a lot wider than civilian transportation, the corporation is not searching to venture into other places as of however, for instance, the military. “Military applications need power and performance and sizing it down to civilian applications will be difficult. The cost of having electric drives in military applications is also huge,” shares Chakravarthy. Thestartup aims to bring numerous vendors, provide chains and disciplines collectively in constructing the automobile, which will be a 1st in the nation.