The Ways We Move speaks with The AeroAuto Global Sean Borman about their vision

In this episode of The Ways We Move, I sit with Sean Borman, CEO of AeroAuto Global who joins us to discuss the evolving landscape of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) and the pivotal role of consumer education and infrastructure in shaping the future of air taxis. 

We explore the importance of safety, public perception, and the challenges of securing investment in this emerging sector. Sean shares insights on entrepreneurship, collaboration, and the transformative moment facing the industry—drawing parallels to the early days of the automobile.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to AeroAuto and Sean Borman
03:25 The Role of Education in Advanced Air Mobility
06:29 Industry Challenges and Investment Trends
10:15 Public Acceptance and Safety in Air Mobility
13:56 Infrastructure Development and Future Vision
22:46 The Entrepreneurial Spirit and Team Dynamics

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/X7bsM_ElaAg

Takeaways:

• AeroAuto bridges the gap between manufacturers and consumers in AAM.
• Education is crucial for consumer understanding of advanced air mobility vehicles.
• Public perception of safety is vital for air taxi adoption.
• Infrastructure development underpins AAM success.
• Investment trends are shifting as public interest grows.
• Community professionals can enhance public trust in air mobility.
• Consumer-centric approaches are necessary for diverse needs.
• The industry is at a transformative moment, like the early days of automobiles.
• Entrepreneurship drives sustainable, innovative solutions.
• Collaboration is key for advancing the AAM ecosystem.

Sound bites:

• "We're witnessing a once in a lifetime revolution here."
• "We're all lucky to have you backing us up."
• "It's a team effort, that's for sure."

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Transcript

Nicolas Zart (00:01.313)
Alright well Sean, please introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about you.

Sean Borman (00:06.764)
Good morning and thank you for having me on today. What an honor. We've been speaking for a long time and it's nice to actually get some face time just you and I. So my name is Sean Borman. I'm the CEO of AeroAuto and we have started a unique company called AeroAuto Global that started about four years ago.

Our original thought was to get into this new industry in the way that Wells Fargo did. There's a bunch of manufacturers out there that are trying to create all of these new and wonderful forms of transportation. Wells Fargo, back in the 1800s, didn't make their money panning for gold. They gave all the services and supplies to all the gold miners.

So AeroAuto has come up with our way to get into the industry under the niche of getting the supplies to the end consumers. We saw that there was a big hole in the industry where the end consumer was being ignored.

By doing so, we decided to create a dealership and a distribution network from the manufacturers to the end users, whether it's the high net worth individuals, whether it's just standard pilots, whether it's municipalities and government agencies. In doing so,

We are forming a network with many of the different manufacturers that are out there and representing them and creating an educational opportunity for the consumer.

Nicolas Zart (02:03.437)
Yeah, that's interesting. mean, you're in one sense, it almost sounds like you're describing Amazon, you know, taking over the Sears concept, but putting it online. But yours has something a little bit more. It's consumer centric. a lot of the industry, a lot of the players, the stakeholders in the industry, advanced air mobility, AAM, we see a sort of a dichotomy between companies that are technically driven.

and companies that are answering a consumer or human need. So that's very interesting what you're saying here. So tell us a little bit about what you're, you guys are working on some pretty interesting things right now. Tell us what's happening, if you can tell, if you can talk about it, of course.

Sean Borman (02:42.797)
So we had a showroom set up a little while back. We had the Air 1 on display. It was a big hit. Air decided to take their vehicle on a world tour, which is great for them. For us to have a brick and mortar facility at that point didn't make sense. We shut it down. We should be opening up another one here, hopefully by third quarter.

into third quarter with some of the manufacturers that finally are at the point now of having a showroom model available. So really excited about that.

It's real important to have vehicles on display for the public. For one, they don't believe that they're real. When we had the Air 1 on display, the people who had actually put reservation deposits down online for them thought they were getting scammed until they came to our showroom and to the facility and saw that what they were putting their deposits on actually existed. And getting to see these new consumers

Eyes light up when they get to see that these things that they've all been wanting, we've all been wanting since childhood come to life for them. It was so satisfactory. The education piece, you know, we've all grown up with cars, you know, since we were kids, our parents.

gave us brand recognition, brand preference. There's Chevy guys, Dodge guys, and Mercedes guys. Our parents, our dad showed us how to change a tire or change the oil. Gave us all the parts and the pieces of the vehicle that we needed to know about for automobiles.

Sean Borman (04:36.023)
There's no brand recognition for advanced air mobility vehicles. And there's no knowledge currently for the end users of what's actually out there and available. And with 600 different manufacturers that are trying to create these things, the vehicles that are coming into all shapes and sizes and dimensions and configurations that...

we play a really vital role for the manufacturers to the end consumer to make sure that the consumers are being put into the correct vehicle for their use case and the budget that they have.

If we go to one manufacturer or another, they're going to say our one vehicle is the be all end all to all use cases. And it's just not true. And if somebody is just looking for an ultralight vehicle to go to learn on their farm or go out over the water with, you know, they don't need a five million dollar air taxi. So, you know, we are that middle middle ground and independent.

advisor to the consumers, to the end users, to make sure that they're being represented properly.

Nicolas Zart (05:49.269)
Yeah, it sounds like you're doing a sort of an agnostic dealership of what's available out there. And you rightfully pointed out, you know, not everybody needs to buy a 10 seeder. There are, you can get a Jetson with one seed, you can get a two seed, you can get a three seed, or eventually four, five, six, and so on, so forth, depending on your need, depending on where you operate, depending on what part of the world you operate to. mean, obviously in China, it's up and running a little quicker than it is out here in the West.

but it sounds like you're answering that need for people to finally see by themselves, to touch, to feel, see these aircraft are real. And I think you're right, not a lot of people like ourselves have seen these Evie tolls fly. And so yeah, it could be a little bit of a dream versus reality problem. So yeah, the education part of it speaks really highly to us, especially us here at The Ways We Move.

So you said you're hoping to have something opened up by the end of the third quarter. That's pretty amazing.

Sean Borman (06:56.013)
Yeah, in fact, I just went down and saw the facility space that we want to open up in in Hollywood, Florida so

it's really exciting that we're getting to that point again. We've got three or four manufacturers that have told us that they're ready to put something in the showroom for people to come and see. Now, along with offering the vehicles, we've really prided ourselves on making strategic partnerships throughout the entire industry and becoming a one-stop shop. So when the customer comes in, we'll put them in the proper vehicle and then we'll set them up with electric charging.

units. We've got partnerships with a couple of companies that offer small garages and hangars, solutions. We've now got many strategic partners in the entire industry to really help set up a vertiport type of situation, know, whether it's at a person's home, whether it's on a farm, whether it's an airport or anything in between.

from a Verta Hub down to a Verta Pad and making sure that when the patient, or patient, when the customer leaves, they've got a whole packet of information of all of the items that the customer's gonna need, whether it's a maintenance program and protocol.

whether it's flight and pilot training, whether it's, like I said, setting up the charging system and the landing centers.

Sean Borman (08:29.217)
We've been working with a couple of companies to make sure that the insurance is set up correctly. So soup to nuts. We really are there for the customer to help the manufacturers do what it is they do best, which is make make vehicles and allow them instead of having to deal with customer service to take the time instead of having to deal with Mrs. Jones screaming that they can't get the the the EVTOL started that

or something broke that we can then supply them with the parts and the maintenance and make sure that the customer is taken care of while the manufacturers are off making the next version of their EV toll even better.

Nicolas Zart (09:12.141)
That's right, that's correct. Tell us a little bit also about what are you guys seeing on your end as far as the industry? Because in the beginning when you and I spoke, things were very different. Our goals and aims were slightly different than they are today. Things move, things change, new players, old players, so on and so forth. What are you guys seeing on your end as far as AAM progressing?

Sean Borman (09:37.678)
It's a hurry up and wait for one thing. Unfortunately, a couple of years ago, the investment money's dried up. The spec system disappeared. We've had a couple of different manufacturers that we represented have gone out of business on us. You know, in the midst of their development, they said, look, we just we can't keep we can't keep this momentum up with the

Nicolas Zart (09:40.966)
Hahaha

Sean Borman (10:06.413)
the the investments are not coming in. So that's been a bit of a shame. Now that some of the big boys are getting more more press and it's becoming more likely that it's going to be real in the eyes of the investors, in the eyes of the public, the money's starting to come back in. So that's exciting.

You know, we're hoping FAA, now that they've made these new just this past week, new announcements about UAM and AAM that will get even more momentum going forward. And we're just hoping to make more more.

manufacturer representative deals and getting involved with more different vehicles. The more we can get in, the more selection that we can offer the public, then the better off they're gonna be.

Nicolas Zart (11:12.077)
Yeah, and I think you're referring to, for those who might not have been following, but recently the FAA released some very interesting things when it comes to drones and that's BVLOS or flying beyond line, you know, line of visual sight. And that's huge because it opens up the pathway for drones to fly.

more than one or two miles that you can see with your own eyes and way beyond, but also for EV tolls carrying passengers. it's like you said, it's a hurry up and wait. We don't feel like we're moving much, but we look back three months ago and we did move. And again, I think you also highlighted another important part of in the life of a startup.

The people you start working with, you know, 10 years ago, five years ago, may no longer be here anymore. And that's the problem with, or not even the problem, it's just the way it is with disruptive technologies when they hit the floor or they become publicly available, then there are...

Companies that will fail, companies that will succeed, mergers, acquisitions. another point you highlighted is I think something everyone feels in this industry. And again, also it mimics back the pretty much the same adoption rate.

any disruptive technologies have had up until now. In the beginning, you have a huge popular public enthusiasm and that sort of draws a lot of investors who might not necessarily be the most savvy in that particular

Nicolas Zart (12:46.379)
industry and I think we've seen that in aviation work traditionally aviation it's very conservative you know the the rule of thumb is a decade one thousand engineers and a billion dollars just just for one airplane right and and I think we've seen a lot of people come into this industry in the beginning not fully understanding all of this and of course now that there's no tangible results just yet at least commercial operational results a lot of these people have stepped back but

It's a good thing. And like you said, I think we're now starting to see the real aviation or aerospace investors come back because they understand what's happening. We fleshed it out a lot more. I remember 10 years ago, we were hoping to fly from from building tops to building tops, eventually landing on a parking lot. Well, they're not designed to do that, right? That's going to be a little hard. But the next buildings will be the next parking lots will be.

airports now are totally open to becoming multi ports where we can integrate regular traffic with these electric and hybrid solutions that are coming up or I guess what we call air taxis and flying cars. So there is a maturity there. I think you're right. think the important thing that we should all remember is now we finally have some seasoned veteran investors who understand what aviation is about. They're coming back to the to the

Well, to the forefront again, that's a good thing.

Sean Borman (14:13.367)
Yeah, it's important that we need to get the communities involved. It's the public acceptance to really make this a reality.

I think the media is really missing the mark on highlighting the air taxi and not so much the personal use and the municipal use, which is going to be even more important. If we can get these vehicles into the police and fire air ambulance and the community sees that our community professionals are using these and are safe with them and are.

confident in bringing them from place to place and bringing them over the tops of their heads that the community acceptance is going to be a much quicker way to travel. people see the air taxis as just a high net worth individual.

person just trying to get their specialty bottoms into their meetings quicker and saying, I'll never be able to afford that, not even bother to use it. The air tax is going to be important when the prices start to come down, but the public's not going to want to get into them if they don't think that they're safe. And the way that we make sure that they feel that they're safe is that they see that their community professionals are using them.

Nicolas Zart (15:41.731)
Yeah, you hit a lot of good points here. And I think also another thing to remember is the EV industry went through something very similar, right? The electric vehicle industry. And in the beginning, it was about, you know, fancy Ferrari types of cars. And everybody wanted a Ferrari to go grocery shopping until they realized that, you know what, know, a Camry works well, guys. Come on, let's get over that one. guess who were the first adopters? Those were fleet owners because

40 miles every day, 60 miles every day, 80 miles every day. We had real data on operations and that helped us understand infrastructure much better and also make light of how important infrastructure is because we're also like the poor cousins of the AAM industry, right? It's like, look at the pretty air taxi. look at the pretty details. Well, guess what?

Infrastructure, that's the glue that bonds it all together. We are the sexy part of advanced air mobility. And so, you know, we need to do that for that to be to be really center and foremost about that. that hence the importance of having agnostic multiports and things like that, obviously. But another thing, too, that you touched on, and that's something that.

And you're right, the EV industry has suffered from that is we need to shift away from public acceptance to now talking about public desirability. And this goes back again to, you know, what does the human being, let's get human centric here. What does the human really need here? And then by showing, hey, this is really amazing right now. If you have $90,000, you can get yourself a Jetson. How cool is that? You flying in your backyard. OK, great. Well, in a few years, you can fly something where you can go a little bit further, a little bit more.

Obviously, the price is going to come down the more you manufacture and all of that good stuff. So I really I want to shift this to public desirability because when I see an EVTOL, when I see, you know, we had Ken Cartland from Pivotal last week on the show, when I see a Helix, I mean, I want one. It's sexy. It's desirable. Same thing with all of them out there. So I think we need to definitely shift that into public desirability and less acceptance. We don't want to put

Nicolas Zart (17:49.795)
the public on the defensive, know, is it safe? my goodness. What else do you need? It's it's quadruple, you know, five times over redundant safety. And who was it? You know what? I can't remember who it was that I heard that was years ago talking about their EV toll having no single point of failure, meaning not one thing can fail and disable the entire EV toll.

I mean short of a blackout but in that case you know if there's an EMF strike then we can't even talk on the computer right? Okay so but still nonetheless so they're even more even safer than a lot of the by far the cars we use today and we have no problems getting into them right? And aviation in general part 135 specifically is the safest mode of transportation and

our industry is heading in that direction, safety, safety, safety. So you're right, I think there's still a lot to do on the education side of things. And maybe that's the problem, you know, with having had like, you know, our generation, and I, we grew up with the Jetsons, right? And it was cool to fly with these little fussers, you know, in our little buildings high up there. But now we need to start looking at it as a toy. And as a reality, they've been flying for a long time. I mean,

Pippus Trail has been flying electrified gliders since the 90s, right? This is nothing new and electric aviation is even older than that. So I think, yeah, you're right. think there's well, and I guess that's also why we have a podcast like this so that we can tell people, hey, it's not a novelty. It exists. It's true. It's been tested. And in China, they now fly. Back in 2019, by the way,

Ehang was already flying across the Yellow River in Guangzhou. I was there. was amazing, right? So I think you're right. We need to shift towards that. tell us about the future. What do you see? How do you envisage the future? How is it going for you guys?

Sean Borman (19:53.758)
Well, we started out as a distributor in a showroom for the manufacturers and because they've been

slow and coming and the FAA has been slow in getting them certified. We've pivoted a bit and as you mentioned earlier how important the infrastructure is and I've been screaming for years, you know that we needed to start two three years ago to get the construction started then so now that Archer now that Joby are close to getting their certifications that we can give them somewhere to go.

The municipalities, the airports have been again slow in coming, but they're now starting to come around and seeing that these vehicles are going to be here. So we're a little bit behind the curve as far as getting the construction started and completed to get the infrastructure in place when the certifications do happen. But they are coming and we've shifted a bit and we just put in the...

an application to the RFP for Orlando International. And we just found out yesterday that they're going to be making their decision tomorrow on Friday. So I'll be going up to Orlando on Friday to see if we've made the first cut or not. We're real excited. We're also going to be

developing a vertiport down in Hollywood at North Perry, it looks like, and have some other projects that are on the front burners that we're finishing up our negotiations with. So we're real excited about getting into that and we have some amazing.

Sean Borman (21:38.23)
strategic partners that we've come together with, including you, Nicholas, and we're really appreciative of all of your consulting to help us along. But Pinaforena Design Group, Pinaforena's made their mark with the Ferrari. They've also got an architectural arm and we're really happy to have them on board. They did the air traffic control tower in Istanbul.

It's just an incredible looking structure. And they've got some other real organic looking buildings. And we think that their mold and their mind of conceptualization of buildings for today works really well with the Vertiport concept. So we're really excited to see the final products that they're going to put together.

Siemens Energy is another one. ANRA for report management. We've got Rex Alexander and Clint Harper helping us out, which, you know, as far as juggernauts in the industry, you we couldn't be luckier to have them on board.

Nicolas Zart (22:57.185)
It's true and they've been here before and anybody who knows anything about aviation or advanced mobility, Rex and Clint are definitely two people we all rely on explicitly. mean whenever I have an infrastructure question I talk to Rex directly. Whenever it has anything to do with the community around urban plane, whatever, it's like hey Clint what do you think of this? So and all of these players you mentioned, stakeholders are you know people we've been talking to for a long time.

And I think it's exciting also, and I hope to convey that message is, you to see something go from a concept to reality. You know, it starts in the mind, it starts in dreaming and start as in, you know, wouldn't it be great if.

And to see that now it is happening is something that's absolutely amazable. And it's not a cliche to say that we're witnessing a once in a lifetime revolution here and it's a once in a lifetime mobility revolution, very much like the very first cars that happened in the late 1880s. And by the way, they were electric, Ferdinand Porsche's first car was electric. The second one was a hybrid. Then something happened. But anyway, who cares? So it's important what we're all witnessing right now.

One of the things that we do also highlight is not only the innovative mobility solutions out there at this moment, but

the people behind them. And so one of the questions we like to ask is what is wrong with you for for working in a startup environment? Why don't you just work a nine to five job and have your mortgages vote and just be happy? Sorry, I didn't say that. But you know what? Just have a normal life. What is wrong with you for wanting to to create a startup? Tell us about your motivation. What gets you out of bed in the morning?

Sean Borman (24:43.021)
I've always been an entrepreneur and try to see the big picture. This is my second career. I started out as a physical therapist. I did that for 30 years. I'm still practicing while we're waiting for AeroAuto to finally pay the bills. getting to do...

and be in this industry as the fledgling, as it's getting from the ground up, it's just been so exciting to watch all of our partners grow, to watch industry grow, to be...

be a part of something that's transformative, that's good for nature, sustainability is super important to me, conservation is super important to me, and the partners that are part of AeroAuto all feel the same way.

I work with an amazing team of professionals that are all working hard in their own silos to make sure that what we're doing is gonna be successful in the future. My partner Paul in Bahrain is taking care of our.

Middle East consortiums and Really doing a bang-up job and in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia and making all kinds of connections for us for the near future We've got Government professionals on our team. We've got marketing specialists

Sean Borman (26:24.237)
financial individuals that have run multiple, multi-million dollar companies to finance for us. Steve Rush, who's our electrical expert, has been really pivotal in helping bring the infrastructure piece to AeroAuto.

Nicolas Zart (26:52.154)
Yeah.

There's definitely, it takes a lot for a startup to function really well. takes an entire team to get everything up and running. And again, good connections, everybody working well together. And this Orlando RFP has been really interesting because it's really one of the first times we're all working together and it gives us a good sense of a core team. I'm also working on an AEM masterclass that also involves a lot of these people we're all working with. And it's nice to see this

core group of people moving forward and again we're chipping at it we're building the future sort of thing so it's good to hear also your point of view and your feedback on that. We're getting close to where yeah we're at about a half hour is there anything else you would like to say to our listeners anything you would like them to walk away with?

Sean Borman (27:45.578)
Just keep paying attention to the media. You know, they're coming and we're a part of it. We're part of a few different consortiums. Miami out of University of Miami, the Miami Engineering Advanced Mobility Initiative.

started a great consortium a couple years ago that we're a part of. We started a consortium in India. We're part of another infrastructure consortium as well. And we're real proud to be a part of that. Nicholas, you just keep doing what you're doing. You've been a huge proponent and huge cheerleader for the industry. And we're all lucky to have you backing us up.

Nicolas Zart (28:32.761)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, indeed, indeed. It's a team effort, that's for sure. Well, Sean, thank you very much for coming to this podcast, The Ways We Move. as always, if you've liked this podcast, if you've learned anything or if maybe your mind has changed around what we call air taxis, flying cars or anything in AAM, please write down your comment. Let us know what you think. And again, share, like, subscribe. All of these things are very important to us to keep

giving you the right kind of information. in the meantime, we'll see you next week with another guest on The Ways We Move and we want to thank Sean and AeroAuto for all the wonderful work they're doing and we're looking forward to a very, very fun future that we're all building here.

Sean Borman (29:21.517)
Thank you, Nicholas.

Nicolas Zart (29:24.665)
Thanks, John.