Aviation as a field is littered with dozens (hundreds?) of startups that have blown through millions and decades trying to build certified aircraft and going bankrupt in the process.<p>Not the first to say this, but there is zero chance that this startup designs and builds a certified electric airliner in the next decade. I highly doubt we'll have these in 20 years. In ten years, we <i>might</i> have battery technology where it starts to make sense, but the most experienced builders of large aircraft in the world generally spend at least a decade and <i>billions</i> of dollars developing new planes. And this will be with completely untested technologies, new safety procedures, engines, etc. Boeing spent $32 billion bringing the 787 to market. On the smaller end, Bombardier spent ~$5 billion on the C series, which looks comparable to this, and I'd expect costs on this to be MUCH higher since it's a lot of new and untested tech, instead of iterating on decades of prior experience.<p>This is either appallingly naive on the part of this team and / or their investors, or this is an acquisition play. I doubt the latter makes sense, and I wonder if this is just VCs not having any knowledge of the field or how unrealistic this is.