After the rush of work for the launch of the Sail Sense, with Spinlock, back in 2019 we have been really lucky to have worked on a huge range of different projects, from houses to cars, from boats to plane bits and sensors to autonomous cars. It's been an amazing few years.
Predictably, most of the work that's been done is confidential but there are a few companies we can mention that we have been lucky enough worked with:
Fering Technologies
Unum Aircraft Seating
Kabina
We-Sense
RAD Propulsion
Cyclops
Icom UK
CeCence
RPDC
All images below belong to the relevant companies
Having worked with Ben Scott-Geddes for about 25 years now, it was still a surprise to see his latest project which is very different to usual sort of cars that we've worked with him on...
The car, the Pioneer, is the first prototype from Ben's latest company, Fering technologies, based here in the UK. Over the last year we have been doing as much testing as we can and as yet, have not found any form of road or surface that we can't drive over.
Whilst the capabilities of the vehicle are fairly unique, perhaps the most outstanding feature of this hybrid EV is its potential range. Through an extremely efficient combination of a range of relatively simple ideas, combined with a rigorous attention to lightweight-ness, with the fully running vehicle will be in the region of only 1500kg, the Pioneer may well run for 7000km without the need to re-fill with any fuels for the onboard generator.
With figures and capabilities of this vehicle we have been speaking to a huge range of interested parties, from Adventurers, to farmers to military and right through to private users.
We are now about to enter the next stages where we develop the first production intent vehicles, refining all areas of the development vehicles which will be extremely exciting.
For more info on this amazing project, have a look here: Fering Technologies.
One of the key people involved with the Fering project is Chris Brady, who Dan worked with at his old company, Acro Aircraft Seating. Chris has been involved in all the key stages of the business since its inception, from high level discussions to the first drives in very muddy fields.
Having sold Acro he has started a new business, Unum Aircraft Seating, where they are now in the closing stages of a very short, but incredibly focused, development program for their first Business Class aircraft seats. And whilst we have not been involved too much, just offering a bit of help and guidance as and when it's needed on a seat that uses a majority of composites in its base structure, it's been a huge privilege to see this project move from sketches to a real part, first shown at the 2022 AIX earlier this year.
One of the most adventurous projects that any of us have been involved with was during Lockdown where we were working with Dr Nahid Sidki, from RPDC, on a concept for an economically viable, lightweight, autonomous vehicle, made primarily from oil-based materials, which is of course a key constituent of both carbon fibres and epoxy resins. Quite a task...
This project was funded by a consortium of some of the world largest companies, based in Saudi Arabia, which was led by RPDC and included team members Light Black Design, Siemens, Adient and UMASS in the USA, along with Kieran Salter and David Seesing from Forge Design here in the UK, to develop a concept for a vehicle and structure that could be economically produced from materials produced from oil, with an eye on the (near) future where we may not being using their products to power our vehicles and wanted to understand the potential demand for the use of the materials in the construction of those vehicles.
As with all projects like this, the range of work that we got involved with expanded almost exponentially and we ended up getting involved with not only the concept vehicle but the development of a revolutionary method to embed a range of sensors within the panels of vehicles, right through to help and guidance in developing whole new car company.
Who knows what they will do with all the data but it was an extraordinary project to have been involved with and we are incredibly proud of the work we did with them all.
There are, of course, very few details that we can pass on but there are a few in this article that Dr Sidki was interviewed for in the National News.
More recently, we have been working on a number of (sort of) water-based products.
The first is a project with an old sailing friend of Dan, Neil Cheston, who set up a company called Kabina.
Kabina's idea is beautifully simple, and extremely obvious; they want to develop a range of houses which CAN float (not necessarily DO float) will be assembled in the vast areas of floodplains that we have here in the UK, as well as across the globe, and produce a range of Flood Safe Homes that will open up huge areas to development that have until now, been unusable in terms of housing.
We have been working with Neil, and his business partner Guy Lane, for a number of years, helping them develop the basic concept of how we can produce both the house and hull and digging back thought old university notes to make sure it will float. It's been an amazing journey, from initial sketches on the back of a napkin, through to CAD and calculations and now getting close to actually building the first houses.
Much like working with Ben and Chris, working with Neil has been an amazing experience whereby we both seem to understand the same things and whilst it has been far from easy to convince the general public that this idea is feasible, through many, many days and months of hard work, it now seems that Neil and Guy are very close to getting the first demo houses built. Once that is done, I suspect that they will be very busy people indeed...
At the other end of the water-based projects, Dan was asked to work with Pete Byford, at RAD Propulsion, to help them take their concept, of a 40kw Electric Outboard, the RAD40, through to production, which will start early in 2023.
We put together a team to compliment the work that RAD were doing internally, with technical, engineering and software support from the engineers at Technia, and now after nearly a year, the product will be released to the world at METS, in Amsterdam, in November this year. Dan will be there all week, to support Pete and his team wherever necessary.
And whilst there, Dan will also be continuing all the ongoing discussions connected with all the different potential applications for the We-Sense product, alongside the successful product that Spinlock are still globally distributing.
And finally, whilst all these projects have been going on, Dan has been working hard on "his mission" to be able to recycle all the carbon sails that are being made for yachts around the globe.
This is not an easy task at all, and although we have made a number of useable, high property materials with these old sails, along with some real parts (including aircraft seats etc) its not an easy thing to get everyone to change their ways but it will happen.
One day.
It has to.
Some of what has been done is covered in this article that Dan did with Nigel Sharpe, for Sailing Today with Yachts and Yachting
It will hopefully be less than 3 years before we add more updates to Our Story but I hope this explains a little bit about what we have been up to over the last few years.