It's clear that any airship project currently has a huge upfront cost for production. This and the fact no airship company has built a production prototype for a cargo airship is what is currently holding investors at bay. Hybrid Air Vehicles is currently looking to secure funding for it's Airlander 50 production prototype, while the Canadian government is kicking it's heels as to what to do about setting up cargo airships for Canada's North.
The current feeling is that because no one is willing to invest in airship development, the government should wait before investing itself. This doesn't take into consideration the globule down turn thanks to the 2008 banker bailouts that was shown to accomplish nothing for GDP growth, and it also doesn't take into consideration the fact that there has never been a production ready hybrid-airship in the history of the world, so of course initial investment costs are high and investors are weary. They are not willing to risk investment money because they don't have that much money to invest or the time to wait around.
We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars, which is something very few people have handy in the United States in 2013. If it was the 80s or 90s, there might be billions of dollars of available capitol willing to invest in hybrid-airships, unfortunately thanks to De-industrialization, we no longer have these types of investors willing take these types of risks, instead investors are buying more proven air platforms as they present less risk and are built on production lines, so they have a much lower initial investment cost.
Helicopter sales are up some 21% in 2012, which clearly shows the market for VTOL capable air platforms is in high demand. The only reason they are going for Helicopters over hybrid airships here has little to do with the capabilities and more to do with the cheap price of helicopters compared to hybrids. Helicopters might also be able to do air crane jobs in tighter spaces, but hybrid airships are far safer and could probably do 99% of those air crane jobs that helicopters are taking up on a mass scale. And that's with the added benefit of being 10 times cheaper to operate, and having 10 times the range. On top of this Hybrid Airships are Worlds easier to fly then Helicopters, which should translate into training costs significantly lower then that to train a helicopter pilot.
So why aren't investors buying hybrids like crazy? Well, it comes down to the fact that currently it will take decades for investors to get back their investments on any hybrid designs. Even if they had them working every day producing $25,000 of net worth per day, it would take 44 years to make $400 million, which is about how much it would cost to build one Hybrid Airship from HAV right now.
Helicopters cost something like 3 to 10 million dollars for a nice one. And if we imagine it fulfilling the same $25,000 per day job, it can pay itself off in less then a year. It will burn more fuel and be more expensive in the long run but it's a lot better to start making a profit in a year, instead of 44 years. Which is what is attracting investors to buy so meany helicopters in the first place.
Obviously the price of hybrid airships needs to come down before investors will be interested, but how much can the price come down? If Hybrid Airships cost 10 million a pop, the Airship revolution would happen tomorrow. But that's unlikely unless these hybrid airships are put on assembly lines, and that can happen only after going into commercial production. Hopefully when these hybrid airship go into production, costs will be cut by as much as 75% which is really what is needed before they can compete with helicopters for world dominance of the markets sling load operations. As then we are looking at 10 year return on investment, with exponentially greater profits then helicopters, after that 10 year decade is up. These are the kind of numbers investors would be willing to wait around for, but until they can expect a reasonable return on investment within the next decade, they will remain uninterested.
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