Impossible Aerospace raises $ 9.4 million to sell drones filled with batteries – TechCrunch

Like smartphone manufacturers, drone companies have added many features to devices in recent years, while making modest improvements to battery life. Although your phone can be used all day long, many drones only record flight times between 20 and 35 minutes.

Impossible Aerospace is trying to change this equation, at least for commercial drones, with a dense design that is essentially all batteries. The company today announced the launch details of its US-1 drone and announced that it had entered into a $ 9.4 million Series A between Bessemer Venture Partners, Eclipse Ventures and Airbus Ventures.

Its first product is a drone that can remain in flight for about 120 minutes under optimal flight conditions, with a range of 75 km (more than 46 miles). It can carry 2.9 pounds of payload, but the total flight time is reduced to 78 minutes.

For commercial customers, the additional flight time can significantly free use cases, changing the state of mind of the mission, which is now much more exploratory.

The company's website features an almost comical X-ray diagram of the US-1's drum composition, featuring a design that looks like a big "X" of drum elements. About 70 percent of the weight of the 15-pound drone is lithium-ion batteries, the company tells me.

This is a design built for old school drone pilots; to achieve their long flying time, they had to give up additional components, the most controversial choice probably being the lack of onboard sensors to avoid obstacles. "Every airplane design is a compromise," Impossible Aerospace CEO Spencer Gore told TechCrunch in an interview. "There is nothing more difficult than knowing what features you will include for some users, which affects the performance of anyone who does not use them."

Gore stated that there were certain features that the startup knew he wanted to explore with his first drone and that the company had an "exciting product roadmap" of designs that made different choices.

The US-1 starts at $ 7,500 and will be delivered in the fourth quarter of this year.