For about a decade, the CAFE Foundation has been promoting the development of electric aircraft and hosting an annual symposium in Santa Rosa, California, and now Brien Seeley, a co-founder of the group and its longtime president, has left to create a new nonprofit, the Sustainable Aviation Foundation. The SAF has launched its own website, and recently announced it will organize its own Electric Aircraft Symposium, to be held in May in San Francisco. The new president of CAFE, Larry Ford, who also was a co-founder, told AVweb this week, “The CAFE Foundation board was surprised and disappointed that Brien has taken this course [to offer a symposium].” CAFE intends to continue offering its own symposium, he said, and will announce the details for their 2016 event in January.
Brien Seeley
Seeley told AVweb he aims for the new SAF to pursue a “big-picture environmental approach,” and he hopes to develop future Green Flight Challenges for electric aircraft. The SAF’s “big tent,” according to the website, “will encompass the many technologies that can bring the legacy aviation world together with the transformative future of on-demand public sky transit and UAVs.” The May SAF symposium will include a forum on autonomous UAVs, featuring leaders from Amazon and Google, Seeley said. The new SAF website will host a blog, “Sustainable Skies,” curated by Dean Sigler, who also will continue to write the CAFE blog.
