Regent's electric sea glider gets closer to reality
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Regent's Viceroy sea glider. Rendering: Courtesy of Regent Craft
A Rhode Island-based startup is advancing testing of a 12-passenger electric sea glider as regulators develop certification rules for a new class of maritime transportation.
Why it matters: Regent Craft aims to launch its Viceroy sea glider as a faster, cleaner alternative to congested highways and regional air service.
How it works: The ship — it's classified as a marine vehicle and governed by the Coast Guard, not the FAA — operates in three modes: float, foil and fly.
- At the dock, passengers board like any other boat.
- As it moves out into the crowded harbor or inland waterway, it rises up on hydrofoils to navigate choppy waters at speeds between 25-40 miles per hour.
- Once in open water — about a mile or so offshore — it can lift off and fly up to 180 miles an hour on a cushion of air about 30 feet above the water, using the same "ground effect" that pelicans, cormorants and other birds use to conserve energy as they glide over the sea.
Its electric range is about 180 miles, but could extend to 400 miles with next-generation batteries, co-founder and CEO Billy Thalheimer tells Axios.
State of play: Congress recently directed the U.S. Coast Guard to begin laying out the certification and inspection process for this emerging category of vessels known as wing-in-ground (WIG) craft.
- Regent is still testing the sea glider in hydrofoil mode off the coast of Rhode Island and is progressing toward the first flight with humans on board later this year.
Check out this video of the vessel in action on Narragansett Bay last fall, courtesy of Chris Gaito, a neighbor of Axios Pro's Alan Neuhauser.
Zoom out: Regent plans to open a manufacturing facility in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, very soon, says Thalheimer.
- In addition to passenger travel, the craft could also be used for middle-mile logistics or to ferry workers to offshore oil rigs.
- The company is also pitching it as a military vessel to transport troops and cargo among islands in the Indo-Pacific region.
What we're watching: Among the first customers is a Connecticut-based private members' club known as The Twenty Five, which ordered 30 of the sea gliders for deployment along the East Coast.
- The group plans to begin rolling them out in 2027 across key corridors such as New York to the Hamptons, Boston to Nantucket, Palm Beach to Miami, and Miami to the Bahamas.
