West L.A. startup Icon Aircraft has been hiring over the past few months as it prepares to start producing its lightweight airplanes by the end of the year.
In March, the company hired Ron Nussle Jr., a former supply chain director for Cessna Aircraft Co. of Wichita, Kan., as vice president of operations. This month, the company hired a new chief financial officer, Chris King, formerly of Chatsworth’s MRV Communications Inc., a publicly traded communications technology firm.
Steen Strand, Icon’s co-founder and chief operating officer, said the hirings come as the company shifts out of its research and development phase and into production and sales.
“The entire team is really fired up right now about shipping our first units,” Strand said. “It’s a long development cycle to get an airplane to market. When you’re within reach of doing that, everyone’s charged up.”
The company’s total head count has grown from just a few employees to 38, and Strand said he expects to triple that number as the company ramps up production later this year and starts delivering planes in the first half of next year.
Icon is based in West Los Angeles, near Marina del Rey, but has manufacturing and research facilities in the Kern County town of Tehachapi. Several key Icon employees formerly worked in the nearby town of Mojave for aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites LLC.
Icon designs and manufactures planes that, under new Federal Aviation Administration rules for light sport aircraft, can be piloted by beginners with only 20 hours of flight training. By comparison, a regulator pilot’s license requires at least twice that. The planes, which can take off from land or water, have a top speed of 105 knots and a range of 300 nautical miles.
Icon, founded in 2006, planned to start selling planes a few years ago, but the company had trouble raising capital during the recession.
Investors returned last year, as Icon raised $25 million from private investors, including Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt and former Boeing Co. Chief Executive Philip Condit.
Strand said Icon already has orders for 720 planes, each of which will cost upwards of $150,000. The company plans to deliver its first 50 planes next year.
Vision Recharged
April was a rough month for local hydrogen truck maker Vision Industries Corp.: A former employee sued the company and the Port of Los Angeles dumped Vision as its vendor to upgrade a fleet of port trucks.
But the company, which recently moved its headquarters from El Segundo to Gardena, got a bump this month, as Rancho Dominguez trucking firm Total Transportation Services Inc. announced it will buy 100 of Vision’s trucks for $27 million.
The definitive agreement announced by TTSI marks Vision’s first sale to a private entity. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach had been the company’s only customers so far.
“This thing is debugged. It’s ready for prime time,” said TTSI Chief Executive Vic La Rosa, whose company has been testing a Vision truck since last year.
TTSI is seeking state and federal grants to help pay for the trucks, but also will invest a “substantial amount” of its own money, La Rosa said. If the grants come through, Vision could start assembling trucks by the end of the year.
Vision is shopping for industrial space in Long Beach where it plans to assemble the TTSI trucks.
Vision buys truck chassis, electric drive trains and hydrogen fuel cells from other manufacturers then integrates those parts into zero-emission trucks designed to haul port cargo. The trucks, which cost $270,000, use electric motors powered by batteries, which are recharged by an on-board fuel cell.
Last month, Russell Miller Jr., former investor relations director, sued Vision for wrongful termination, fraud and breach of fiduciary duty. In the lawsuit, Miller alleges that the company misled investors and the public about the progress of its truck technology.
Vision officials have denied the allegations.
The company also lost a port contract last month when it fell behind schedule in installing fuel cells on battery-powered trucks built by another company.
Strategic Shift
Executives from Santa Clarita’s Biosolar Inc. might be feeling whiplash in the wake of last week’s announcement that the Department of Commerce might charge tariffs of between 31 percent and 250 percent on Chinese solar panels.
Biosolar, which makes plant-based components for solar panels, had long wanted to sell its products to a U.S. solar panel maker, but the company dropped that plan as domestic companies struggled to compete with cheaper Chinese imports.
“I’m not sure what this will do to us,” said David Lee, Biosolar’s chief executive. “I guess we’ll probably have a better chance of selling in the United States, but I’m neutral on this. Any tariffs and trade barriers, they can produce uncertain results.”
The Commerce Department made a preliminary decision on the tariffs last week and could give final approval later this year. The tariffs could push some panel manufacturing back to the United States.
Staff reporter James Rufus Koren can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 225.
