With the economy tanking under the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the largest investor in Jon Rimanelli’s electronics and aerospace business at Detroit City Airport withdrew his $10 million support, and Rimanelli was forced to lay off 15 employees.
Soon after, while in a two-week quarantine because of his exposure to the virus, Rimanelli survived by doing what he does best — he fired up his computer and began working on his latest flying machine, an electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, or eVTOL, in common parlance.
Those days of despair two years ago sparked what he hopes is the next chapter in the Motor City’s history of personal mobility. His company, Airspace Experience Technologies, or ASX, has offices and design space on the second floor of the former public terminal that overlooks the entire airfield at Detroit City Airport. To the south is ASX’s machine shop and assembly area, which is housed in two connected bays of an historic hangar designed by noted Detroit architect Albert Kahn in 1929.
The ASX team is planning to introduce Sigma-6, a full-scale concept aircraft, to the public at this year’s North American International Detroit Auto Show at Huntington Place, which runs from Sept. 14-25.
Rimanelli believes Sigma-6 will be the next big breakthrough in mobility, as it will shorten the transit of cargo, passengers, military payloads, and first responders via fleets of tilt-wing, six-engine aircraft that can pick up, transport, and land swappable pods — including passenger cabins — in safe, confined, and protected areas.
“It’s a tilt-wing aircraft that takes off vertically like a helicopter, transitions to plane mode flight, and flies forward like a plane,” says Rimanelli, founder and chairman of ASX. “When you arrive at your destination, the wing transitions again and lands like a helicopter — but remember, the engine is electric, so there’s very limited noise. And it can be five times faster than driving, for the same cost.”
The swappable pods seamlessly connect to the fixed wing using a ground robot. A pod designed for cargo can ferry up to 2,000 pounds a distance of 100 miles (and more as battery range improves), while the passenger module will seat five to seven passengers, including a pilot.
“Detroit has been a leader in mobility for 100 years, and here’s an opportunity for our community to take a novel approach to mobility and make it the standard for the future,” Rimanelli says. “Our expectation is our volumes will achieve a level where it’s economically accessible for the mass traveling public.”
He believes passengers will use the aircraft like an Uber ride, in this case for quick hops over heavy traffic between airports and population centers, commutes across town, or to a second home.
Imagine flying in the morning from Oakland/Troy Airport to Traverse City, a 60-minute trip, and spending the day enjoying a winery tour, playing a round of golf, or hiking. Heading back in the late afternoon, there’s plenty of time to make a dinner in downtown Birmingham or see a concert at the Fox Theatre in downtown Detroit.
“Personal air mobility is still reserved for the wealthiest,” Rimanelli says. “We’re developing a system that will be affordable to most people. It will cost as much as a ride share to get to and from an airport, your home, an office, or wherever your final destination (may be).”
Eventually he expects the fully loaded aircraft will have a range of 150 miles. “At scale and production, we’ll see moving one ton of cargo come down in price to about 64 cents to 65 cents per mile, which is competitive with a Class A truck. But we can make a trip much faster,” Rimanelli says. “It’s not a toy or a tool for the rich. Ride-sharing is a big part of our future.”
Almost as important is a complementary four-wheel omnidirectional ground robot Rimanelli invented. The squat, 6-by-18-foot transporter rolls forward, backward, sideways, or in circles, and is capable of carrying a pod full of cargo, loading it into position, and attaching it at the center of the aircraft wing.
“This ground vehicle — and we’re applying for a patent on it — will have the ability to deliver and plug in different pods automatically,” Rimanelli says. “The ground robot has the potential to tug, or move, the aircraft into positon, perform pre-flight testing, and recharge the battery in the aircraft.
“In the future, an aircraft will fly into a dedicated terminal, connect to a ground robot, and it will guide everything along, swap out different payloads from, say, a passenger cabin to a cargo container, and then the aircraft flies away to its next destination. If you’re in a cabin, the pod could take you to a gate where you safely disembark. The cabin is cleaned and charged, and put back into service. It’s very efficient.”
Rimanelli and his team have big dreams of the company boosting the fortunes of the airport and the community around it. He anticipates hiring 50 new employees within a year, with another 1,000 jobs coming online as the company expands. By the end of the decade, he predicts the company can build 12,000 air vehicles and create 60,000 new jobs in the city.
By then the aircraft should be a staple in urban air transit for passengers, cargo, and police and EMS — and, when and where needed, remote and covert military activities. Initially, the aircraft will have a pilot on board, but at some point in the next decade autonomous systems will take over, first in the cargo sector. Already, aircraft, including commercial passenger jets, are highly automated.
The company plans to phase in the aircraft by offering it to the U.S. military first, before developing commercial cargo fleets. EMS, including med-vac operations, will be the third stage of service, followed by passenger flights.
“As we go through each of these segments, we learn and develop efficiencies. And this, effectively, is our four-step plan to mature the aircraft to where we can move people and product in the national air space system safely, quickly, and quietly,” he says.
A graduate of Albion College, west of Jackson, Rimanelli has spent three decades designing and building complex electronics and robots. He’s also an instrument-rated seaplane pilot with more than 1,000 hours of flight time in various aircraft.
The first unmanned aircraft he built 10 years ago was made out of balsa wood, zip ties, hobby grade electric motors and batteries, and an open source auto pilot. From there, he built, tested, and distributed highly automated eVTOL aircraft for Lockheed Martin; they were used by a range of customers in the law enforcement and commercial markets.
Along the way, Rimanelli designed and built what can best be described as a small flying tank, with the rotors set between the tracks.
The remote piloted aircraft, for which Rimanelli received one of his two patents, can land atop a summit or a roof. From there, the vehicle, equipped with small cameras, can be directed to disengage its rotors, activate the treads, and maneuver to see what’s on the other side. It also can be flown next to a tunnel opening, land, and then enter the channel and look for explosive devices or undertake an inspection.
In 2017, Rimanelli co-founded ASX with the vision of designing and mass-producing an electric aircraft that took off like a helicopter and cruised like an airplane. With term sheet backing and development support from Uber Technologies Inc., ASX built and flew six smaller prototypes before developing the full-scale Sigma-6 aircraft.
Just like a startup, ASX personnel hoarded scarce capital and shortened production times using custom off-the-shelf automotive electric motors, inverters, batteries, high-voltage cabling, and switches.
“We’ve taken automotive electric vehicle architectures and plugged them into an aircraft, so I always like to say we don’t build flying cars, we assemble car parts so you can fly,” he says.
The company has a dozen employees, but they’ve received major help along the way. “What’s unique about us is we’re a very small team partnering with very large companies and their (respective) R&D departments. Those R&D departments have had as many as 70 more people working on our projects at different times,” Rimanelli says.
Among the longest-serving partners is the international power management company Eaton Corp., with sales of $19.3 billion last year. “They help us with thermal management systems of the motors, the inverter, and the battery,” he says.
Another partner is commercial aircraft manufacturer Spirit Aero Systems, with which Rimanelli signed an agreement to eventually build and certify the Sigma-6 aircraft.
“I try to take a very conservative approach to spending cash. We’re very efficient with our capital,” Rimanelli says. “When I can use somebody else’s tooling, somebody else’s facility, somebody else’s machines, I do that. It pays to be efficient and resourceful.”`
