The Big Tech Show
00:25:52 · Adrian Weckler, Bobby Healy
[00:25:52] S2: And so... So you've you've moved Tulsa in Oklahoma. Now you've gone from having arguments over m 50 car parks to a city in Tulsa. And just describe to me what the environment's like there in terms of a drone company. [00:26:08] S1: Well, like, we're backed by, politically, the governor of Oklahoma, the lieutenant governor, the mayor of Tulsa. We've had two senators visit us in Dublin and load our aircraft, US senators, one from Michigan, one from Oklahoma. We've had the governor of Oklahoma come here. We've had no end of political support in The United States because jobs matter. And Trump, the White House, issued an executive order about a year and a half ago called Unleashing American Drone Dominance, right? A bit of does what it says on a tin, but it was intent on saying, right, America has lost twenty years to the Chinese on manufacturing, supply chain, everything from motors to batteries to PCBs to carbon, you name it. [00:26:57] S2: Not wrong about that.
00:26:57 · Adrian Weckler, Bobby Healy
[00:26:57] S2: Not wrong about that. [00:26:58] S1: No, 100%. And the only way to fix that were, like, at the geopolitics, look at China's influence in Ukraine, Russia's influence, all this stuff, and it's pretty obvious that America fell behind on this and needs to fix that. So, they introduced this act, and the act basically said, we are not going to tolerate this anymore. We are going to build an America. We are going to favor American companies. We are going to disable foreign adversaries. And unfortunately, in that word, they used the word foreign instead of just Chinese. They should have just said Chinese, but it affected us. They basically banned man as drones from America. So we've been doing a lot of work with our political allies in The United States to get open, and we just got that just a few days ago with FCC, the Federal Communications Commission. And so it's a delicate thing, but behind that executive order came meaningful actions, right? So the head of the FAA, the Federal Aviation Authority, Bryan Bedford, he came to Dublin to see our operation. This is a guy with 40,000 employees under him. He's responsible for the entire airspace in The United States, the biggest airspace in the world by far. And he visits our office in Glasnevin, and I couldn't even show him an operation running out of our office. And he says to me, Bobby, what do I have to do to get you to The United States? What do you need from me? He's the head of the FAA. You know, that's compelling from my point of view. [00:28:29] S2: What's the difference in visions here? Like,
00:28:29 · Adrian Weckler, Bobby Healy
[00:28:29] S2: What's the difference in visions here? Like, [00:28:33] S1: Jobs first, right? So America needs to catch up, it needs to enable. So what China five years ago created a set of laws called the low altitude economy, and they essentially commercialized the airspace below 500 feet. They made it easy for people to fly and build a business, right? They did it countrywide, once you have a license, do anything you want. There's no local planners, there's no anything like that, it's just get going and fly. [00:28:56] S2: So what about... Let me ask you about Tulsa, though, because I've seen you say before that you wanna set up a base and I think you're setting up... Is it 30 bases there? [00:29:05] S1: We think 25 to 30 is Yeah. All we have 10 now, 10 From [00:29:11] S2: concept to having a base done, it's more a matter of months or weeks there. [00:29:16] S1: I moved there July 3, and five weeks later we were flying commercially. [00:29:22] S2: Right. And what about the stuff that comes up here, like planning processes, community objections, noise? How is [00:29:31] S1: that dealt with over there? The Federal Aviation Administration under the Part 108 regulations federalized all the rulemaking. So they say there's a federal rule around noise levels, environmental, wildlife, all that stuff. It's singular. [00:29:47] S2: Framework document. [00:29:48] S1: Framework... Well, no. And implemented, right? We have a great framework document with no budget and no political will, right? And that's fine. I understand that we're a small country, you know,
00:29:48 · Bobby Healy, Adrian Weckler
[00:29:48] S1: Framework... Well, no. And implemented, right? We have a great framework document with no budget and no political will, right? And that's fine. I understand that we're a small country, you know, [00:30:00] S2: but is it fine? I mean, [00:30:02] S1: mean, it's not not kicking some arses, you know, quietly, and I, you know, collectively, I would say, me and lots of others, will be back in Ireland, and we will make it happen. [00:30:13] S2: Do you think you'll fly again here in Ireland?
00:30:14 · Bobby Healy
[00:30:14] S1: 100% we will. We're going be the number one drone delivery operator in Europe. But I don't want piss everybody else off. No, I would say we're five years away in Ireland. Because first of all, the IAA, really credible team, Air Nav, a really credible team, have no mandate to make this happen. It needs to come from the Transport Minister. Transport Minister needs to say, we want use space and we want it fast. And it's not about Manna, it's not to enable Manna, it's to enable every startup that wants to build technology in Ireland in this space needs a use space, right? Hospitals, the Rotunda Hospital needs use space, right? So there's so many users, but it has to come at cabinet level that says, IAA, make this happen, make it happen quickly. And until that happens, it's not going to happen. So you need political will, and that's what China has. You know, obviously with a dictatorship, it's handy if you're a dictator. America has a dictator too, and, you know, verdict commas, but shit happens, right? So there's four companies in the world doing drone delivery, and they're now all in The United States. It's Amazon, Google, Wing, sorry, Google, Wing, Zipline, us, right? They're all there because now collectively there's about 5,000,000 deliveries by the end of this year, maybe a little bit less, say 4,000,000 deliveries by the end of this year, next year probably about 50,000,000, So it's grown at 10x next year. We're gonna be part of that. We'll probably be two to 5,000,000 of those next year, something around those lines.
00:31:46 · Adrian Weckler, Bobby Healy
[00:31:46] S2: And you guys position yourselves as the Ryanair of the industry. Because the [00:31:51] S1: business model, we think the business model is low cost airline. Yeah. So it's not sexy, it's not tech, it's not about that. Like, see, Zip Line's vision is amazing or whatever. Know, say to everyone, look at it, it's so cool. But it doesn't work financially yet. It's to be a lot of hard... So think about it this way. Ryanair beat British Airways, they beat Lufthansa, they beat Air France easily. They're all flying the same planes. It's the same product in the Verticomas. But actually... [00:32:19] S2: You shift more passengers. You ship, I think, you've you've more deliveries per aircraft [00:32:26] S1: Oh, yeah. Like, per we're four times better than the next best. Yes. We do eight deliveries an hour per aircraft. [00:32:32] S2: Okay. And that's down to?