Will 300km/h e-seagliders displace ferries and planes?

Special thanks to organisations who support innovation and tech leadership in New Zealand by partnering with NZ Tech Podcast: One NZ HP Spark NZ 2degrees Gorilla Technology

Episode Transcript (computer-generated)

Paul Spain:
Hey, folks, greetings and welcome along to the New Zealand Tech Podcast. I’m your host, Paul Spain. And today we’re hearing from Shah Aslam, who is the chief executive at Ocean Flyer. Welcome along to the show. Great to have you here.

Shah Aslam:
Likewise. Thank you.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, now, it’s pretty exciting, the. The technology that Ocean Flyer have announced that you’re going to be, you know, bringing into the market you partnered with, with Regent, who have been developing the technology in question here, which we refer to as sea gliders. Quite fascinating. This is really cutting edge stuff. So it’s electric transport. It potentially allows some incredibly fast journeys from one port location to another. The cost of the transport, when compared to other mechanisms, looks as though it could well be quite competitive. But really we’re looking at something that’s cutting edge, that’s kind of new to the world.

Paul Spain:
So really excited to delve into this chat now. Of course, I should say a huge thank you to our show partners to One NZ, 2degrees, Spark, HP and Gorilla Technology, who make all these sort of conversations possible for us. So thank you to our great supporters. But maybe before we start, you know, tell us, you know, a little bit about yourself. You know, how do you fit in and end up, you know, leading a business like this here in New Zealand that wants to, you know, change the way we get around the place?

Shah Aslam:
Yeah, absolutely. Look, thank you, obviously, firstly for having me on the show. Pleasure being here. It’s an interesting journey. I guess for me it starts all the way back when I grew up in Japan. Got used to using a lot of the public transport. And places like Japan, Singapore, their public transport is very robust. Cancellations, delays.

Shah Aslam:
You don’t hear those words associated to public transport there. And when I moved across to New Zealand in a different way, I mean, I studied down at Otago and Dunedin, we didn’t really need public transport as unikids. But when I moved up to Auckland and working, you have to use public transport. It is probably the most efficient way of getting around. But you often run into issues with timeliness here. And I think that was one of the starting catalysts of why I went down the industry of transport. Before that I was working for BNZ in corporate finance and I had some great years there, worked with a lot of cool people and probably got to a point in my career where I thought, look, if I’m going to make the move, now is the time. Took a jump and landed off all places in Napier and air Napier, which is pretty cool.

Shah Aslam:
I mean, Hawkesbury is a beautiful place and, you know, getting involved in the transport side, behind the scenes, understanding aviation, understanding transport. It’s been a good, awesome couple of years. So when Covid hit, things slowed down. But we were lucky that we were still an essential service provider so we could continue operating. We moved a lot of PPE equipment, a lot of blood tests, samples, all sorts of stuff, which helped a lot of people need. And I guess if you think about transport, when we talk about connectivity, when we talk about prosperity, economic development, all of those things, one of the catalysts for those things is transport. You know, if you. If you got reached to places in a timely manner, then, you know, you forego a lot of those benefits.

Shah Aslam:
So we looked at other ways of doing transport, and it was December 2021, I remember clearly, I came across Regent on LinkedIn, and I sent a message to Billy, who’s the CEO and co founder of Regent. And I think from memory, within 24 hours, he’d come back to me. I still remember. He’d drawn a map of New Zealand, and he’d focused on Wellington, Blenheim, Picton areas. And in his way, he showcased the population size and the benefits that sea gliders would have. And instantly, I knew, look, not just from a technology point of view, but from someone leading such a company, it was a good fit. So we entered into formal discussions, negotiations, and a couple of months later, we were announcing our big order, which was for 25 sea gliders. So the sea gliders come in two models at the moment.

Shah Aslam:
The smaller one, which is twelve seater, the viceroy, and the larger one, monarch, which can go up to 100 seats. We’ve placed an order for 15 of the viceroys and ten of the monarchs.

Paul Spain:
Incredible.

Shah Aslam:
And we’re anticipating delivery mid decade and the way these things work, just to give you a quick overview, they start on the hull harbor side, just like a boat. As they gain speed, they rise on their foils, and as they gain further speed, they take off, flying 10 meters above the surface of the water, also known as wing and ground effect. So, essentially, the cushion of air between the water and the sea glider, they glide on. And the biggest benefit of these, I guess, making use of wing and ground effect is you conserve a lot of battery by not having to go up to higher altitudes, but you also gain a lot of the benefits of the high speed transport. So it’s the best of two worlds, if you ask me.

Paul Spain:
Mm hmm. That’s great. So, looking in at this technology, it certainly sort of got my mind going, like, where did this idea for seagullitis come from? Why isn’t this something that we’ve sort of seen operating previously, it sounds really smart, this idea of fast transport from one port to another. And you talk about, I guess in a New Zealand context that might be, you know, between Wellington and Nelson, I guess in the us sort of context. What would be some examples of ports that you might be able to use this type of technology to get between there?

Shah Aslam:
Yeah, so look, in New Zealand, I think we’re very fortunate because if you look at our population, 80% of the population is close to coastal areas or within half an hour to 45 minutes drive. So from that point of view, you look at it and you go like, look, this is the perfect solution. We’ve also got a large body of infrastructure that sits out there which is known as the water. And I think it’s underutilized at the moment. Biggest advantage of sea gliders is that we can make use of that waterways. And look, you know, obviously they don’t crack, they don’t break, and yes, water levels are rising, but they don’t flood. So that’s the biggest advantage that we have. We’ve seen this through air Napier during the cyclone in Hawke’s Bay, you know, when the roads were closed, Napier technically was cut off from the rest of the world.

Shah Aslam:
We were a little island on our own. Same with Northland during the cyclones. And Coromandel as well. That road to Coromandel and back is obviously struggling. So when you look at those regions around New Zealand, you go like, look, we don’t actually need a big piece of infrastructure, otherwise known as a Runway or airport. We don’t actually need a lot. We just need any body of water, a bit of a pontoon, bit of a charging infrastructure, and away we go. And one of the biggest benefits of the sea gliders is the range of this.

Shah Aslam:
In a straight line, you’re looking at 300 speed of 300 km an hour. So to put that in a real life example, you’re technically looking Auckland fangaray and return without having to recharge. You’re also looking at Auckland to Hungary in a 35, 40 minutes journey, which is, I think, huge. And then the biggest, third biggest thing is our key stakeholders, which otherwise known as the ports around the country. Most of them are based in city centers. So if you need to travel to city center Auckland, you don’t have to make that commute from the airport into city center. You’re essentially landing in city center, walk to your meetings, walk to a lunch date and jump back on a sea glider and back you go.

Paul Spain:
Well, just getting from an airport to city, and in some cases can be anywhere from 15 to 45 plus minutes. Right. So if your entire journey can be shrunk down by dropping those steps out, that’s a pretty big deal. So, yeah, New Zealand examples is obviously sort of a bunch of places where that could happen. Tell us a little bit around Regents, their sort of story. I guess I’m presuming, being us based, that they’re looking at some use cases in the us market as well. And there must be a whole bunch of other kind of examples around the world, I guess. Great to get the New Zealand perspective, but also to kind of look out at other parts of the world and what those use cases might look like.

Shah Aslam:
Yeah, absolutely. Look, if you look in the US, I mean, that’s a massive market, right? You look at, let’s start with the east coast, because that’s where Regent is based as well. You’ve got New York, Boston, Washington, down Florida. I think if you look at the user case from Florida down to the islands, that’s a massive opportunity, right? And I think Billy and Mike have picked up on that, which is phenomenal. If you step outside of the US, from the east coast to the west coast, there’s a lot of opportunities there as well. But globally, if you look at it, you step out to island countries, you’ve got Japan, you’ve got Singapore, you’ve got the coasts of South Korea. And then if you look at out to Europe, Brittany ferries, for example, is one of their customers. They’ve signed up as well.

Shah Aslam:
I think it’s easy to restrict ourselves to landlocked countries, but I think this is one of those transport modes which benefits those countries that have that neighboring to water areas. And I think one of the stats was that 40% of the world’s population lives close to the water. So, you know, if you can’t target 100%, well, 40% of 7.5 or 8 billion people, that’s not a bad place to start.

Paul Spain:
Now, I look back to when I was a youngster. Hovercrafts were kind of a technology that picked up for sort of a period of years, maybe it was a couple of decades or so, where that seemed to be a technology of choice for some scenarios. I remember catching big hovercraft, probably early 1980s, probably around 1981. It was from Dover to Calais, if I remember correctly. And that was an absolute beast of a machine, and it just skipped across the channel and was really neat. But the sea gliders or the seaplanes, the sort of technology that we’re talking about are really going to be next level, aren’t they, in terms of, you know, I guess the big thing is pace. Now you talk about them flying ten metres above the water. That sounds a little bit scary.

Paul Spain:
Is that one of the reasons why we haven’t seen this technology, you know, pickup in the past, there hasn’t been, I guess, maybe the same simplicity of sort of safety that there is with some of the newer technologies.

Shah Aslam:
Absolutely. Look, when you talk about 10 meters above water, it seems like a long distance, but it’s not as well. On the flip side, if you look in the past, you know, back, compared.

Paul Spain:
To being 30,000ft up, 10 km up, like, hold on, it’s a hundredth of a kilometer.

Shah Aslam:
It is. But if you look back in the past, I think it was the 1950s or sixties, when the russian machines develop this technology for different uses. Different.

Paul Spain:
Different uses. Military, I think. Right.

Shah Aslam:
Sensitive topics. I won’t go there, but, yeah, absolutely. But if you look at how much technology has changed alone in the last five or ten years, right, let alone the last 70 years, things which weren’t possible back then are, I mean, you know, 70 years ago, you still had to write letters, and it take a month to get to the other side of the world. I think my dad studied in Texas, and I think he used to say in the sixties or early, late fifties, if you made a telephone call back home, you used to take a day or two and you’d put your name in the queue and number and you’d get a ping later on. So I think where we are now, where we can instantly communicate with people, video conferencing, all of those things which were impossible. So technology has come a long way which has allowed and enabled some of these great winters to take place. From a seaglider point of view, back in the 1950s, the Russians didn’t have the automation around it. So Regents have taken advantage of, I guess, the growth in aviation and how far aviation has come from an avionics point of view, that’s some of the elements they’re going to be using as part of their automation process.

Shah Aslam:
And I think that ensures and gives a lot of confidence to us and hopefully to the public as well, that these things will operate in a safe environment. These things are being built to similar standards as an aircraft, and that’s purely because of Mike and Billy’s background. They are ex aviation that have come into this industry, and I think that’s a very positive thing. We see that as well with our conversations. I think we’re technically stepping down in a way not from anything else, but a speed point of view. You know, aviation aircrafts do go up to 200, 5300 nautical miles an hour. I think we’re stepping into a zone which is doing 160 knots an hour. I think if you had someone stepping up from the marine environment where ships are traveling at five or ten knots to 160, I think the perspective is different.

Shah Aslam:
I think all of those elements do go a long way in ensuring that we operate with the safety mind. Safety in mind. But also, look, you know, from a technology point of view, it was, what, the 1910s or the 1920s? When the first commercial flight happened, a lot of people were skeptical. Here we are today. I think last year the stats were about 3 billion people flew around the world. We’ve seen it through Covid, when aviation came to a standstill, impacted a lot of people. So it’s become second nature to us. And I think electric vehicles are helping some of those arguments.

Shah Aslam:
People are getting more and more comfortable, but I also appreciate that, look, it’s probably another decade or two to go before people fully become comfortable. And that’s the beauty of sea gliders. When you talk about electric aviation, people are a bit wary of flying ten, 20,000ft in the air with electric batteries, whereas in our case, we are only 10 meters above the water and we’re always above a Runway. So in the absolute worst case, you can just glide back onto the water, send out a signal for a pickup.

Paul Spain:
And I think your batteries get a little bit hot submerging water.

Shah Aslam:
Right.

Paul Spain:
And douse them a little bit with some correct. Dip them in this water.

Shah Aslam:
And then, as we’ve seen recently, unfortunately, where the went, you know, involving Singapore Airlines and Qatar Airways, where turbulence has caused a lot of injuries and stuff. So I think there is a lot of people, there are a lot of people out there who don’t enjoy unnecessary flying at 30,000ft. And I think for them, this is definitely the game changer. So I can assure everyone that, look, this will be a high standard of safety. And the way Regent are designing, manufacturing and building these sea gliders, we’ve been there twice. It’s phenomenal to see the leaps in technology that the world has taken.

Paul Spain:
Now you’ve got with the two different models, so the smaller one, that will be, what is it? Twelve passenger seats, plus. Plus two for the. Do you call them a pilot or do you call them a captain? Or those that.

Shah Aslam:
We’re trying to come up with a hybrid name just like the sea glider. We’re trying to figure out a name, but I think at the moment you can refer to them as captains.

Paul Spain:
So, yeah, the twelve seater one, I think that was sort of in the 300 km an hour type speed, up to 500 or over 500 km an hour is sort of targeted for the larger kind of 100 passenger variants. So some pretty snappy speeds. Now these aren’t the sort of speeds that we would usually think of for a ferry, but my understanding is that from a regulatory perspective, the sea glider is more inclined to, I guess, sort of follow marine type regulations rather than aviation regulations. Is that correct?

Shah Aslam:
That’s correct. So back in the day, IMO, which is an international maritime organization, and ICAO, which is an international civil aviation organization, that both sit under the umbrella of the United nations, reached an agreement that it’s not necessarily speed, but it’s anything that flies under 500ft will be regulated by maritime and anything above 500ft will be aviation space. And so I guess the key benefit with the wing and ground effect is because it needs to be so close to the surface of the water, it falls under maritime. But, you know, and that’s the beauty of this thing from a regulatory point of view. We’ve had some really positive conversations with maritime New Zealand. You know, they’ve taken on board what we’re doing. They’ve asked us to prepare the safety case, which obviously in conjunction with the Regent we’re working on. But I just like to assure the public that this will be built to aircraft specifications, but will fall under maritime and the US Coast Guard out of the states, and rest assured it will be a safe vehicle.

Paul Spain:
What are the tallest masks, masts on, you know, on, you know, yachts and superyachts and so on. And our tallest, I guess our, you know, the, the tallest ships, because you’re going to have some things to think about there. I’m picking.

Shah Aslam:
Absolutely. And look, some of them are taller. I mean, if you look at cargo ships or cruise ships, they stand taller than 10 meters. But again, this feeds back to the technology, the avionics, the radar system that Regent is installing in these sea gliders that will be able to pick up these key elements. From what we know, I think it can pick up as small as a jet ski and it can pick it up quite a distance away, which allows us to maneuver out of the way and avoid any of the key obstacles.

Paul Spain:
So if that jet ski is going over some really big surf and is getting a bit of air and you think it might hit 10 meters, you can prepare for that.

Shah Aslam:
We can prepare for that. We can maneuver but I think more importantly, if there was a jet ski in the way, we’d probably move out of the way beforehand.

Paul Spain:
Wow, that’s pretty interesting. And, you know, I guess sort of looking through the different modes of transport. So I’m thinking around Auckland to Northland, but I’m sure listeners can. Can replace that with any other journey that might fit for where they live and where they might travel. But, you know, that’s a journey I’ll take from time to time. Doing it in a plane is, you know, it’s a bit of a hassle, sort of getting to an airport. Auckland international Airport seems to more and more be leaning into being a monopoly business, I think, you know, the last time I came out of the terminal, Auckland International. Yeah.

Paul Spain:
Used to a kind of a, you know, get through customs and then, you know, you walk about, I don’t know, 10 meters out the door and, you know, you. Uber picks you up. I think last time it was, you know, more like a ten minute walk in the rain to, you know, to try and get. And, you know, when I asked someone from the airport, is this just a temporary thing? They said, oh, no, no, this is, you know, this is permanent. And, you know, no doubt there’s a financial reason for them wanting to, you know, promote, you know, valet parking right on the doorstep or some other commercial thing. But for those that sort of do regular journeys, airports aren’t always the most efficient. B seven even for domestic flights, although for those shorter hauls, say, in Auckland to Northland, it’s a reasonably quick process to go through. Depending on what your transport is to the airport and whether you need to park and where you can park and the like.

Paul Spain:
So I’m sort of thinking, okay, got that mechanism. From Auckland to Northland, it’s certainly something I could drive. You can take a bus. But if there was an option that was as simple as jumping on a ferry and it would get you up there, you know, very, very quickly, that seems quite compelling. So I’m kind of curious to sort of walk through the case. Like, can you imagine for, say, in Auckland to Northland type service? Would people be jumping on at a downtown ferry terminal or is that sort of too complicated for the vehicle to navigate through and get around other stuff before you kind of get. Get out to sea a little bit and can, you know, turn things up a bit to sort of full pace and then what would it look like at the other end? Is that going to be part of the challenge, that there’s a lot of time sort of wasted to and from at either end, or is it likely to be at the much sort of simpler end of things?

Shah Aslam:
Absolutely. I think you’ve touched on a couple of points there. If you don’t mind, I’d like to get to first. So the monopoly argument is an interesting one. I think to your earlier point, why this hasn’t been done before in a country like New Zealand, or we haven’t been creative. I think if you look at the industry as a whole in New Zealand, if we take transport, I think it’s very. Well, it’s not competitive. Right.

Shah Aslam:
Let’s not hide behind the bush. And I think when you have no competition, you don’t really breed creativity. I think airlines, other operators, ferry operators, the railways, they all become complacent. And I think if you look at the last 20, 30, 40 years, that’s what’s happened in the country. All the transport systems have become complacent. And the unfortunate thing is that the taxpayers are paying for it twice. They’re paying to bail out these companies, but then they’re also paying an exorbitant amount of prices on their tickets. New Zealand is not big enough where you have to break the bank to travel.

Shah Aslam:
Right. Let’s be real. It’s not. It’s a beautiful country, but it’s got good geography, but it’s not that big. And I think that lack of innovation stems from the fact that there is no competition across the industry. So when you look at what we’re trying to do with sea gliders, yes, we’re trying to bring some competition into the market. We’re trying to give people a choice, because I think in the 21st century, people should have a choice of how they travel. It shouldn’t be just one way or one mode.

Shah Aslam:
So I think that’s the biggest key. And I think airports, airlines, ferry operators, ports, you know, they all have their business cases, but I think they probably need to become a bit more innovative also. I remember a time when I was a young kid, I was fortunate to fly a lot. Traveling used to be fun. Be at the train station, be at the airport, be at the ferry terminal. You’d get in there and the feeling would be different. And I think that fun has been taken away from all modes of travel. And I think it’s been replaced by anxiety.

Shah Aslam:
It’s been replaced by the fact that if you’re a second late, you’re gonna miss the flight, and that’s the end of the world. And I think that’s not the way how travel should be done. Done so I think our aim with the Seagliders is not just to provide the fast, affordable, comfortable transport, it’s to bring that fun back. As a business case, we should not be making money off canceled flights or extra baggage or select a seat. The business case itself should be strong enough where you can provide that service to people. So you should be able to, with the seaglider, walk down. If you were to, say, Auckland to the Wyatt or the ferry terminal, wherever we get space and, you know, we’ll work with the local authorities around there and we’ve had some good conversations. If there’s a seat available, if it’s 30 seconds left, will take off, you should be able to buy a ticket.

Shah Aslam:
Jump on and away you go. On the flip side, we will create the technology as well, where you can book in advance to make sure that you have a seat. Right. So it’s. That convenience piece is a big one. How do you calm people down? And then there is the high frequency. So if you do miss a sea glider, the next one shouldn’t be too far away. So we’re bringing, I guess, high speed transport and public transport together to move a large number of people and cargo.

Shah Aslam:
And as long as we can keep true to our founding pillars of Ocean Flyerer, I think we should be good.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah. Oh, that sounds fascinating. Now, to make this sort of thing work, there’s obviously price points that you have to land at. And, I mean, I’m just bouncing things around in my head. You know, I’m picking, you know, sort of, say, a battery capacity in one of these smaller vehicles might be, say, ten x what it would be in an electric car. So in terms of cost, if, you know, the smaller vehicle is going to take a dozen people, the cost of the electricity, well, that’s not a crazy sort of big, you know, big cost to it. You’ve got.

Shah Aslam:
Well, it depends on how chance power manages the grid, but, yeah, it shouldn’t be.

Paul Spain:
That’s true. Hope that’s not gonna be too much. You know, you’ve got a vehicle that’s relying on electric motors. So it’s very different from a maintenance perspective compared to a traditional aircraft engines, that the maintenance cost. There is another sort of big slice. You’re not having to take them up to a high height, which is a lot of the fuel gets burnt there. So it seems like when you sort of break it down a little bit, this should be something that is pretty competitive from a price perspective. And then, you know, presumably more so as you go up to your, your 100 seater glider.

Paul Spain:
Right. So 100 seater sea glider. Presumably those sorts of things sort of, you know, improve a bit with scale as well. Certainly when you. When you’re talking about the cost for your pilot or your captain carrying 100 people rather than a dozen. So what are you thinking would be the sort of numbers if we look at them in a New Zealand dollar or us dollar type context for one of these journeys, it’s maybe 100 to 150 kilometer journey.

Shah Aslam:
So those journeys, and I think most of if you were to look at New Zealand or the main city centers on the smaller one, you’re looking at average flying time of 35, 40 minutes. We don’t anticipate that going above $100. So it’ll be sub 100. And that’s what we’re kind of working.

Paul Spain:
Towards in New Zealand dollars.

Shah Aslam:
In New Zealand dollars, yeah.

Paul Spain:
Internationally it’s more like sort of 60 us dollar.

Shah Aslam:
Correct. $50 to $60. I don’t think there should be more than that. And then you’re right, once you get to the larger one, the economies of scale kick in. So you can look at even slightly lower than the $50 to $60. You could be at the 30 to 40 us dollar mark. So I think, again, you’re not going to. It’s going to be affordable enough where you can do the travel on a daily basis if you need to.

Shah Aslam:
And that’s. That’s the key with the sea gliders.

Paul Spain:
But yes, 30 to 40 minutes commute, right? That’s totally less than what some people will use in any big city to get around.

Shah Aslam:
Don’t even get me started on Auckland right now. To get from east or west or south or North Auckland into Center city, you’re looking at more than 50 minutes, 60 minutes. That traffic is shocking and people talk about infrastructure. I don’t think adding another four lane highway is the solution. I think this goes back to the issue at hand, which is public transport. You have to have a strong public transport network and that needs to be multimodal. Right. It’s not just trains, not just buses.

Shah Aslam:
It needs to be across the board. If you are to remove congestion, making streets one way or getting rid of parking is not the answer to long term sustainability. And I think that’s what we see in the sea gliders, that if we can remove people from the roads, and I’m not saying, you know, we’re going to remove all people, but the more people we can remove off roads, the better it is. We’ve seen this in Northland with Brindirbins being closed. You know, we’ve done a couple of trips since then. It’s added another 30 to 40 minutes to the journey time. Yeah. You know, you go to Northland right now, Feng ere and cities beyond, and you talk to some of the local businesses, anywhere from your cafes to your retail stores to your pharmacies.

Shah Aslam:
They’ve all seen an impact to their top line, and it shouldn’t be the case. You know, as part of being part of the developed country, we should. The base level infrastructure should not crumble under the slightest of weather events or roadworks or any of that stuff. It should be robust on its own. And I think, on the flip side, while I say a lot about it, I think that’s where the opportunity for something like sea gliders and ocean flyers, and I encourage the country to work with us, anywhere from your corporates to local councils to governments to businesses, because there is an opportunity here for everyone. What we’re trying to do, we are trying to disrupt the system anytime. And you would have heard this a lot in the tech world. Disruptors come through, Uber came through, taxis became complacent.

Shah Aslam:
You still, with some of the taxi companies, you still have to call and book, and you don’t know when the taxi is going to arrive. The biggest thing with Uber is not just the fact that you can order from the app, it’s the fact that you know exactly at what point the taxi or the car is going to show up on your front door. Right? And that goes across the board for a lot of these technological apps, right? They’ve done a great job. They’ve disrupted the dinosaurs in the industry, and we all know what happened to dinosaurs, and we’re here to do the same.

Paul Spain:
And, you know, of course, there’s the. The zero emission sort of nature of electric transport, which is obviously.

Shah Aslam:
And we started with that today. We started with that goal of zero emissions, but soon it became affordable, comfortable, fast. So all of those byproducts that we’ve added on, people right now have been discouraged by what’s happening in the industry. To travel, be it for life events, for funerals, weddings, be it for education purposes, healthcare purposes, be it for work. And I think Ocean Flyerer and a lot of these communities can help change that. You know, ask a granddaughter sitting in Auckland who wasn’t able to make it for their grandparents birthday or life event, you know, up in Northland. It’s sad when you kind of hear those stories, because, again, I come back to the point. New Zealand is not big enough where traveling should be such an anxious costly headache of a problem.

Paul Spain:
It should be simple now. You know, I’ve spent a bit of time looking at and talking to leaders in sort of the other parts of the electric air transport field, chief executive from Bell in the US and number of people at other firms. And I guess what I’ve noticed when it comes to this type of innovative transport and technology, and I’m picking there’s a level of crossover here when we look at this sort of electric transport, obviously, safety is a really key element, but to really develop the technology so that it’s kind of ready for public use, it does seem to take quite some, you know, quite some time to get there. How, how does it, how does it look for you if, you know, if Regent take, take a decade more to deliver this technology at a commercial level, what would that mean? Does that sort of break things for you guys and do you have a, have a feel for, you know, what that pace of development and commercialization looks like?

Shah Aslam:
Yeah, absolutely. The beauty and nature of risks is such that you can come up with all the mitigation policies, but when the risk actually hits, sometimes you just got to deal with it. And the reality in this case, why we’re confident that it’s not going to be delayed by a decade, is number one. We’ve seen Regent hit their milestones, all the milestones they’ve laid out to us since we started this process with them, they’ve smashed them, which is awesome to see, because for a project of this size, new mode of transport, all of the above delays are common, like you say. So we have seen Regent and they’re doing a phenomenal job. They’ve got a lot of experience behind them. Secondly, and this is where the fact that it’s regulated by the Coast Guard in maritime, I think that gives us a lot of confidence as well that it won’t be delayed. Forgetting everything else.

Shah Aslam:
If you look at it, it’s fair that aviation does take a longer time. Part of that is a safety case, because when you are flying at 30,000ft in the air, you gotta be across every single nut bolt screw in that airplane to make sure that it can sustain the tensions that an airplane goes through when it’s flying at 30,000, especially when the turbulence hits. So you know that when you bring it back down to the maritime environment where, you know, part of your flight is in two dimension, you’re, you know, in the water and then the other part is just 10 meters above the water. I think the path to certification and regulation because of that is much faster. And I think those are the things that give us confidence that Regent will hit their mid decade timelines in the absolute worst case. You know, like you say, hopefully not by a decade, but if there are delays where we will work with Regent. But also if you look at other modes of transport and the technologies that are up and coming, I think the sea glider is still way ahead of its time, in a good way. So I don’t believe a delay of a couple of years in the worst case is going to impact us or it’s going to break our resolve.

Shah Aslam:
I think we are committed to the cause. We think that a country like New Zealand should have some innovative ways of moving people and goods at a very cost effective price. And since we are committed to that goal, we will continue with Regent and we will continue to back Regent.

Paul Spain:
Yep. Okay. Well, it’s going to be a really interesting one to watch. Yeah. The other one I’ve been speaking to whisk and with their Quora evtol. So that’s been an interesting journey. I think they’re now, they’re now 14 years in. They’ve done quite a bit of testing here in the New Zealand market and so on.

Paul Spain:
So, yeah, you can. But, yeah, obviously there are differences there between different types of technologies and so on, as you say. So, yeah, it’s going to be a really interesting space to watch and we certainly wish you all the best with Ocean Flyerer. And look, you know, I always encourage that, you know, New Zealand should be a market where, you know, we’re maybe a little bit simpler from a regulatory perspective than, say, others in the world. We want to be a center for. For innovation and for trying out these sort of technologies. So I’d be hopeful that we can be towards the sort of front end of this journey and government regulatory bodies can get that balance right from creating an opportunity for this sort of technology to be safely tested and trialed in this market, you know, before it goes into play commercially. But, yeah, really, really exciting.

Paul Spain:
I’ll sign up now for a ride as early as possible as I usually do on these things. So, yeah, we look forward to how it progresses from here. So, yeah, thanks very much, Shah. Anything else that we haven’t covered that we should squeeze in?

Shah Aslam:
No. Look, thank you very much for your time. And like I’ve always said, we are trying to do something different. I appreciate all the support that we received from our key partners. You know, Northland has been one of those regions that’s been phenomenal. Northport, Hungary District Council Northland Inc. All the ports around the country, they’ve been very supportive of us. Maritime New Zealand, I think, has grabbed the bull by the horns, which has been awesome to see.

Shah Aslam:
And, you know, while the onus is on us to obviously provide them a safety case, the conversations are positive and they’re open to them. So that’s huge. And, you know, I welcome anyone else who wants to come partner up with us because, like I said, this isn’t about just oceanflyer. What we are out to achieve is a big thing in an industry or one of the industries that needs it the most. And, you know, we welcome all and everyone to join forces with us to improve the level of connectivity in New Zealand. Because at the end of the day, connectivity does breed prosperity and, you know, innovation is a huge part of that. So whatever we can do to help, we will. But we look forward to introducing sea gliders into New Zealand by mid decade.

Shah Aslam:
And, you know, I’d love to sign you on for the first seat, but I’ve been told by my colleagues that I’ve sold the first twelve seeds many times over. But you know what? I will sign you off for the first seed again. That’s awesome.

Paul Spain:
Well, thanks, everyone, for listening in. Great to have you joining us and catching New Zealand Tech Podcast today. Of course, if you’ve been catching the live stream, and you know, there’s always a bunch that do, be sure to go follow us on your favorite sort of audio app, whether that’s sort of Spotify, Apple podcasts, etcetera. And so you can follow us and catch our audio episodes that way for free. Of course, if you’ve been listening into the audio episodes, then make sure you follow across on your favorite sort of platform for video. We tend to be across YouTube, Facebook Live and X from a live platform under NZ Tech Podcast. Or you can follow myself, Paul Spain, on LinkedIn to get the live streams. LinkedIn actually quite good, because if you happen to be running the app, you will get those sort of pop up alerts when we live stream.

Paul Spain:
So, yeah, that’s us for this week. And of course, big thank you to our show partners. Gorilla Technology, HP, Spark, 2degrees and One NZ. Thanks again, Shah, and really excited to hear about Ocean Flyer and the Regent technology that you’ve ordered and we look forward to seeing them here in New Zealand.

Shah Aslam:
Absolutely. Thank you.

Paul Spain:
All right, cheers.