Latest Updates

Hi Everyone,

I apologize for not writing a blog post for a while.  After I returned from the Global Methane Forum I have been busy personally as well as for Freedom Motors.  I had several “paperwork” deadlines I needed to work toward which has kept me from blogging, and I apologize to readers.

The feature image at the top of this post is the Moller International wind tunnel, which we are bringing back online.  The wind tunnel has been put back together and it is almost ready to start running again!  We have also been moving some of our machining equipment inside and from storage and getting it refurbished, as we will need this equipment when we start low volume engine manufacturing.

So a few updates.

Funding Opportunities

I completed an application for the 2018 cohort of the CleanTech Open business accelerator.  Their organization seems well suited to helping a company like ours with a business in biogas energy generation systems.  Our application to Elemental Excelerator was rejected for this year’s cohort, which is unfortunate, but there is a lot of competition for their assistance.  I feel we are a better fit for CleanTech Open anyways.   We had also applied for a CalSEED grant, but that was also rejected (I may have already mentioned that) because our designs are too-far developed.   Our grant application to ARPA-E OPEN 2018 is still under review, and I am in the process of applying for the OGCI Venture Day.  Venture Day is a perfect fit for Freedom Motors because they are looking for methane mitigation technology that they can bring to market quickly (not R&D, but product & production development.)  It also gives us access to large oil & gas industry companies which have a lot of resources.

It takes a lot of time and effort to do these applications, but there is some overlap of material, so that helps.  If any of our readers are aware of other grant programs, business accelerators or seed funding opportunities that would be appropriate for us to apply for, please let me know!  I do my own research, but sometimes I miss opportunities (like the World Bank Zero Routine Flaring by 2030 request for proposals).

We have a separate fund-raising program in progress that is taking most of my time and the details of which I cannot disclose, but we are targeting to launch that program by the end of May.

Conferences

There have been many discussions on our social media pages about conferences that Moller International should attend, like Uber Elevate or AHS Forum 74.  There are many others out there, of course.  Although we would love to attend all these conferences, they are costly and time consuming, we have limited staff and receive very little ROI when attending.  Our focus is still on creating a sustainable business on Freedom Motors Rotapower technology which will give us the opportunity to continue development of Moller aircraft.

Dr. Moller will be attending iTEC 2018 for a panel titled “Flying Cars and Electric Aircraft – Current Trends and Future Strategies”.  Uber, Boeing and Zunum Aero will be on the panel.  I will try to attend the conference as well (I am an IEEE member).

We are always open to sponsorship to attend conferences, but we are going to be very selective because we have very limited staff and time to devote to conferences at the moment.  I am trying to attend conferences on behalf of Freedom Motors as we need to raise our profile and network as much as possible in order to break into the methane mitigation market, where we are unknown.

That’s all for now!  Best Regards, Dave