Freshta Farzam CEO & Founder LYTE Aviation: Pioneering the First Heavyweight 40seater Hybrid-Hydrogen eVTOL Aircraft – Next-Level UAM Disruption
Freshta Farzam is a German entrepreneur who believes that bold mindset, sharp focus and passionate co-creation is the solution to enable innovation and advancement in passenger & cargo transportation worldwide, and thus, to tackle global climate crisis collaboratively.
Freshta has more than 10 years of experience in the green hydrogen and aviation industries. At LYTE Aviation, Freshta Farzam CEO and Founder, is pioneering the first heavyweight 40seater hybrid-hydrogen eVTOL aircraft, the SkyBus and its cargo variant, the SkyTruck, that expands the horizons of current dimensions, shapes and opportunities of passenger and cargo transport, disrupting the mass transit markets from buses, trucks, ferries to helicopters and regional aviation. Suddenly, you can flexibly deliver 40passengers or 4.5 ton cargo from point to point, a 40m x 40m landing pad, no runways required, and create entirely new routes worldwide and make inaccessible destinations easily accessible. “Whatever you dream, begin it, for boldness has genius, power and magic in it” (Goethe), that is the philosophy by which Ms Farzam enters into highly competitive industries and yet, expands the existing technologies and markets with her bold mindset.
She founded the company LYTE Aviation in 2023, after being in stealth mode with her team for almost 3 years prior, and has global leaders, governments and investors of the aviation industry backing her up with her visionary venture.“
What was your catalyst to push the boundaries of aviation?
My vision and my confidence in my visions that I see for the future of aviation were my first catalysts, my team of expert engineers and our customers that then supported and backed up my vision and my deep desire to disrupt the known, scale up the existing and accelerate innovation, became then my catalyst. Aviation hasn’t been innovated for over 50 years, and the first 2-seater air taxis have opened up the pathways for disruptive technology, and that was my inspiration, opportunity and timing to scale up the 2-seater air taxis next-level to the 40-seater eVTOL worldwide. And the resonance since we are in the global aviation market, is tremendous!
Tell us about the LA-44 and its cargo variant, the SkyTruck. What is the significance of utilizing hybrid-hydrogen electric VTOL?
The LA-44 is our 40seater eVTOL for 40passengers. And its cargo variant is basically the same aircraft, also with tandem tilt-wings and 8 engines, but when we take out the seats, we have space for 4.5-ton cargo, our SkyTruck LA-44C. The significance of utilizing hybrid-hydrogen electric VTOL is that a) hybrid is the most realistic approach with current state of existing technologies, because no eVTOL can take off and land vertically with a capacity of more than 2 -4 passengers, if they decide to go fully battery electric or fully hydrogen electric today and b) the ranges are also very limited if we had chosen only batteries or only hydrogen. So, choosing hybrid-hydrogen eVTOL is our most realistic approach to a certifiable aircraft that will run partially on SAF and partially on hydrogen.
What was the ideal constellation when designing your aircraft?
The design needed to be hybrid, a design that is not too innovative and challenging in assembling, certifying and getting into serial production. But we needed to consider in the design that it needed to be appealing to our passengers, in the next 5-10 years. Passengers need to feel safe already by looking at our aircraft. And our human minds embrace innovation fastest, if we get introduced to known designs first. So, we decided therefore to use wings, wings that tilt, but wings that the human eye knows. And four wings make our cruising journey much more fuel efficient, over 600 miles range, but also our passengers identify with our aircraft easier than with completely innovative designs.
How essential is AI when skybuses, air taxis, and drones are operating in the same airspace?
Absolutely essential, if done right. AI can actually simplify and accelerate coordination and operation in the otherwise vastly complex matrix of drones, air taxis and sky buses with different use cases, planned routes, altitudes, ranges etc.
What is your philosophy in life and how does it translate into LYTE Aviation?
I am very spiritual, meaning I believe in my soul and the universe, and I believe in attracting and manifesting things that I see and feel, especially when I close my eyes. And that is what happened with LYTE, I attracted and manifested the right people at the right time along my entire journey the last 5 years. I didn’t know a lot of people in the industry prior to my first public appearance in the aviation industry in 2023. In 2019, I had a stroke of fate and since then my entire life completely changed. And I started seeing future visions, and one of them was seeing the 40 seater VTOL aircraft suddenly one evening, which had been already envisioned by great visionaries in the 1950’s with the Fairey Rotodyne, I found out later. Along my journey with LYTE, I have attracted many like-minded spiritual industry experts that connected with me on many different heart to heart and visionary professional levels. And I am beyond grateful for their appearances and support this entire time.
You have your eyes on the Middle East. Why?
True. We also have our eyes on India and the US. Because I believe the Middle East and the US are front runners, when it comes to scaling and accelerating innovation, which is what I am pursuing personally. And India will definitely require faster and new kinds of point-to-point transport of masses, people and goods en masse. India is heavily investing into innovation in aviation but also is home to almost 1/4 of the world population, while rural to urban connectivities are sometimes still not as advanced as it would be required for such a large population. And this is why we received our first 10 pre orders for our SkyBus from India, as our customers are seeing that they can definitely fill a huge gap here with our aircraft. Middle East is willing to pioneer operations of the first air taxis, and as we are the pioneers in the first 40 seater eVTOL, we can definitely help expedite the inter-city or regional connectivity from Dubai to Abu Dhabi or to Ras al Khaimah (the new casino city of the Middle East) or even cross-border routes, within the next 5-6 coming years. We are currently in talks with the Oman and the UAE government.
Please share your ecosystem and why your partners are crucial to your success.
Our ecosystem goes from green hydrogen producers, hydrogen tank suppliers, fuel cell partners (e.g. H3Dynamics), universities (e.g. Cranfield University) up to infrastructure partners like airports and vertiport companies (e.g. Bluenest by Globalvia), regulators (e.g. EASA, FAA), AI and Robotics companies and even 2-4 seater air taxi partners for the last mile delivery of our 40 passengers (e.g. Crisalion). They are all crucial to our success because I want them to collaborate with us today, in order to build and certify our aircraft also from a holistic approach, from the beginning. This will save us a lot of time and money along the journey, and they will be a part of our network today while we are laying the foundation for our new routes. So, it is a win win from the beginning for all of us.
How excited are you for the future?
Absolutely excited. I believe we are living in exciting times where innovation is accelerating already since the introduction of the internet in the last two decades and much faster communication and information exchange worldwide. Now, imagine what pace innovation and co-creations will take in the very near future already, let’s say 5-10 years, with AI expanding daily on an exponential level, with robotics and energy storages becoming much more efficient moment by moment. These are the best times to create and pursue our dreams and visions. And the world is much more open to collaborate today, the new generation is seeing the power of collaborating instead of competing. And I just love it! What I am most excited about is to enable completely new point-to-point, even door-to-door routes for a much faster and efficient commute for people and for goods at a very reasonable price. Currently, we have estimated a price of 39 US$ per seat for a route from Bainbridge Island to Redmond, whereas a ferry commute alone costs 29$. So, you can imagine how excited I am to see when our SkyBus and SkyTruck actually accelerate worldwide deliveries. And beyond that, our SkyTruck will actually impact entire industries, such as pharmaceutical or food industries. Imagine in the future, you don’t need 9 h via truck for your chilled goods transport, instead you only need 2h from warehouse to warehouse with our SkyTruck. No runways required, just a 40m x 40m landing pad.
What is your vision for the next 5 years?
My personal vision for the next 5 years is to get our aircraft through the certification process smoothly, seeing and touching our full scale prototype and how it takes off vertically with its 20m fuselage and 19m wing span, while those moments create many more new believers, that dreams of the intangible do come true, and become tangible! My vision is to publish my book soon and have many beautiful souls dance with me through my book the “Waltz with Rumi”, because it truly opens up hearts and that is my vision for young and old, for East to West, to open their hearts and allow their dreams to give them magical wings. Probably shouldn’t speak about magic in a professional environment, but I see that surprisingly, many people are very receptive for magic in business today as well.
Twitter: @lyteaviation & @freshtafarzam
