INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Much like smartphone manufacturers, drone companies have been adding to devices plenty of features over the past several years while making
only modest improvements to battery life
But while your phone may boast &all-day& usage, a lot of the top drones only register flight times between 20-35 minutes.Impossible
Aerospace is looking to change up that equation, at least when it comes to commercial drones, with a dense design that is basically all
The company shared launch details of its US-1 drone today, and announced that it had closed a $9.4 million Series A fromBessemer Venture
Partners, Eclipse Venturesand Airbus Ventures.Its first product is a drone that can most notably stay airborne for about 120 minutes in
optimal flying conditions, with a 75km (over 46 miles) straight-line range
It can carry 2.9 pounds of payload, but that drops the total flight time to 78 minutes.For commercial customers, the added flight time can
dramatically free up use cases, changing the mindset of operation from mission-based to much more exploratory.The company website has an
almost comical X-ray diagram of the US-1 battery makeup showcasing a design that just looks like a big &X& of battery cells
Around 70 percent of the 15-pound drone weight is lithium-ion batteries, the company tells me.This is a design built for old-school drone
pilots; in order to achieve their lengthy flight time they had to ditch some additional components, the most controversial choice probably
being the lack of any onboard obstacle-avoidance sensors
&Every aircraft design is a compromise,& Impossible Aerospace CEO Spencer Gore told TechCrunch in an interview
&There nothing that harder than to figure out what features you will include for some users that hurts the performance for everybody else
that not going to use them.&Gore said there were certain features the startup knew it wanted to drill down with its first drone and that the
company had an &exciting product roadmap& of designs that made some different choices.The US-1 starts at $7,500 and will ship in Q4 of this
