Jon Rimanelli
Founder of Airspace Experience Technologies (ASX)
March 14, 2023
Jon Rimanelli is an electronics and aerospace entrepreneur with over three decades of experience designing and building complex electronics and robotics in prototype and production quantities. He is an instrument rated seaplane pilot with over 1,000 hours of flight time in a variety of aircraft. His passion for sharing flight led him to establish Airspace Experience Technologies (ASX), electric aircraft that are failure tolerant, clean, quiet and connected. He will bring his dynamic story to the Men’s Club of Grosse Pointe luncheon on March 14 at the War Memorial.
Jon has assembled a team of international leaders from aerospace, defense and automotive industries, and he is actively converging automotive mass production techniques with the safety and reliability of commercial air transportation. Prior to starting his aviation career, Jon founded Nextronix, a contract electronics design and manufacturing company serving consumer, industrial, automotive, aerospace and defense industries.
Jon spent over 20 years prototyping and mass-producing high reliability components for various automotive aerospace and communications companies in North America, Europe and Asia. Jon’s team at Nextronix developed and tested the first Intelligent Transportation System (C-ITS) Antenna in partnership with Motorola. This technology now represents core Intellectual Property for digital airborne traffic management systems being employed by ASX.
He is also the founder of Detroit Air Racing, which partnered with Red Bull Austria, and facilitated the 2008 Detroit Red Bull Air Race World Series. The races were said to be the most successful drawing over 750,000 spectators, resulting in over $100 million in economic impact between Detroit and Windsor Ontario.
It was during the application process where Jon was inspired to return aircraft manufacturing to the City of Detroit.
In 2011, Jon founded Detroit Aircraft Corp, and ultimately teamed with Lockheed Martin in 2013 to manufacture and distribute the small electric VTOL aircraft for Military, civil and commercial customers worldwide. Detroit Aircraft has represented several Public Safety Agencies to integrate Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the National Airspace System.
In 2017, Jon founded Airspace Experience Technologies (ASX) to commercialize large scale eVTOL aircraft, ultimately earning a term sheet with Uber Technologies. ASX worked with Uber Technologies to conceptually design e-VTOL to move 4-5 passengers, up to 65 miles at cruise speeds of 150 Mph for the price of an UberX Ride. After 6 iterations, Jon and his team were thrilled to begin flight testing the Sigma-6 Aircraft in Summer 2022, an all-new transportation system designed and built in Detroit.
For pictures from Jim's presentation,
March 14, 2023 Members Meeting.