Terrafugia |
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Official Site: Terrafugia.com
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History
The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Terrafugia page on 27 May 2018, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Terrafugia is a Chinese-owned corporation, based in Woburn, Massachusetts, United States that is developing a roadable aircraft called the Transition and a flying car called the TF-X. The Transition and TF-X are designed to be able to fold their wings, enabling the vehicles to also operate as street-legal road vehicles. First delivery of the Transition is expected in 2019.
Terrafugia was founded by graduates of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduates of the MIT Sloan School of Management. Their team and business plan was the runner-up for the 2006 MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. Terrafugia was then incorporated May 1, 2006, with much of the initial funding coming from CEO and founder Carl Dietrich's US$30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize. The first round of convertible note financing began at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2006 and closed December 21, 2006, raising US$258,215. Five additional rounds of convertible note financing followed. The first round of equity financing closed in 2008 and raised US$1,531,323. Another round of equity financing was initially planned for 2009; the second and third rounds of equity financing raised US$2,037,680 in May, 2010 and US$960,418 in Dec, 2010. Another equity offering of US$3.5 million was reported in May, 2012 of which $1,020,369 had been sold. In October 2008, Terrafugia reported seeking reservations for airframe number 57 representing an order book of more than US$8 million. In March 2009, the company had received fewer than 35 aircraft reservations, but by September 2009, they had doubled that to 70; as of December 2011, 100 reservations were on deposit representing potential revenues above US$25 million.
In July 2017 the company was purchased by the Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, a Chinese corporate conglomerate that also owns the Volvo and Lotus Cars automobile companies, with the purchase finalized in November 2017.
The company started 2017 with 20 employees and hired 75 more people during the year. It plans to hire an additional 50 people by December 2018. During that period the company has increased the staffing levels at its Woburn, Massachusetts, headquarters, expanding the work force in engineering, accounting, human resources, marketing and also operations. A new research and development division was also established in Petaluma, California, which will undertake all future engineering tasks.
| Date | Article | Author/Source |
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| 18 October 2013 | Flying Cars Could Be a Reality in Two Years | VOA News |