USA Drone Motors has emerged from stealth to build large electric motors, actuators, and electronic speed controllers for agricultural and other heavy-lift drones in southern California.
Founder Jon Facer says he saw an opportunity as US drone manufacturers scramble to reduce their dependence on Chinese suppliers following the FCC’s decision to block authorizations for new models of foreign-made drones and certain critical components.
Existing models can still be used and sold, but the restrictions prevent key players such as DJI from introducing future models to the US market, creating an opening for domestic manufacturers.
Facer, who has a background in precision manufacturing and robotics, said he identified a white space in the market after visiting suppliers in China and attending an ag drone conference in Kansas City earlier this year.
“In Kansas City I was able to meet with all these agricultural drone companies in one place and heard the same thing from all them, that they’re trying to reshore production as quickly as possible because DJI and other Chinese players are being blocked, so everyone’s kind of scrambling for an answer.”
A gap in the heavy-lift drone supply chain
While investment is flowing into components for military drones, Facer saw few companies targeting the much larger motors required for crop spraying and other heavy-lift applications. Drone makers at the conference repeatedly told him they were trying to reshore production but remained heavily dependent on overseas suppliers for key components.
“On the component level, pretty much everybody’s buying from one or two Chinese companies. So I’ve been really heads down for the last couple months working on getting some initial designs and getting the machinery that it takes to assemble these motors.”
USA Drone Motors is initially focusing on assembling motors and electronic speed controllers—the devices that regulate the power delivered to each motor—in the US. It has acquired purpose-built manufacturing equipment from China and produced initial samples that it is now taking to drone manufacturers, dealers and end users for testing and feedback.
“We now have several samples and we’re starting to get feedback.”
Not fully made in America—yet
The motors will not initially be made entirely from US materials. Key inputs such as rare-earth magnets and silicon steel [an iron alloy containing a small amount of silicon] remain difficult to source domestically, while some machined parts could come from allied or nearby countries. Facer’s immediate goal is to restore US assembly and engineering capacity, before progressively localizing more of the supply chain.
According to Facer, a US company may be able to source or assemble the frame, tank, sprayer system, software, controller integration or final aircraft domestically, but the hardest pieces to fully localize are usually battery cells, motors/magnets, ESC electronics, flight controllers, sensors and other electronic subcomponents.
Here, Facer differentiates between components that are hard to make in America “because it doesn’t make economic sense” versus components such as magnets made from rare earth metal neodymium, the bulk of which is currently sourced from China.
He added: “The main choke points and hard-to-source things right now are batteries, motors, and some of the electronics.”
From a regulatory perspective, drone makers can seek temporary exemptions from FCC prohibitions on new foreign-produced drones or critical components by disclosing ownership, supply chain and manufacturing arrangements, and presenting plans to shift production or sourcing to the US. To date, several companies including California-based SiFly have secured such exemptions.
But the exemptions will only apply for a limited time, said Facer. “It’s my understanding that if you are buying critical components from a foreign source right now, you need to at least have a plan to transition away from that, to have an onshoring plan to source covered components domestically.”
Beyond compliance: designing for US drone platforms
The appeal of USA Drone Motors is not simply regulatory compliance or a “Made in America” label, stressed Facer. As US drone companies move beyond adapting foreign platforms and begin designing their own aircraft, they will need motors and controllers engineered to their specifications with faster prototyping.
Right now, he said, “Some American drone companies are using licensed models from foreign companies, but as they become bigger, they will want purpose-made motors and controllers and PSCs, and everything else that are developed by their engineers and designed to their exact specifications, rather than just getting something off the shelf.
“Having the ability to do that with somebody next door, to quickly iterate rather than having to wait several weeks for a prototype from another country, I think there’s a lot of value in that. And that’s what I’m trying to provide, not just, ‘Hey, I’m American, and that means I’m better.’”
Testing the market before raising capital
Facer is currently supported by an intern and several part-time contractors and advisers and plans to seek seed funding once potential customers have tested his prototypes and helped validate the designs.
“There’s a lot of excitement in the industry and the direction it’s going, and people see the dollar signs that come with DJI being blocked and the ability for American companies to come in.
‘From what I can tell, most companies are taking an imitate, then innovate, approach, relying on the successes that DJI and XAG and EA Vision and all these foreign brands have started with, and using those as a starting point for developing a completely American-based product.”
Further reading:
Made in America: FCC decision sparks scramble to localize ag spray drone production
‘Please reverse this decision!’ DJI users urge FCC to rethink foreign drone ban
Revolution Drones and Exedy Drones target US ag spray drone market as FCC rewrites the rules
