Exedy Drones, a Michigan company owned by the Japanese drivetrain maker EXEDY Corp through EXEDY Globalparts Corporation, has opened reservations for its Ayre CX crop spray drone. The first deliveries are aimed at spring 2027.
The company is taking $1,000 reservations for the first 500 aircraft, of which $750 is refundable until a customer converts to a purchase deposit, Scott Binder, its vice president for engineering, operations and technology, told AgFunderNews. Exedy says it will not fix a delivery date; instead it will publish each milestone, from field validation to spray validation to a production build, as it is met.
The Ayre CX is a mid-size machine with a 50-litre (13-gallon) tank. It is assembled on a production line in southeast Michigan from locally and globally sourced parts, with US-written software and data held on US servers. Binder said the first phase brings in about 20 dealer groups from roughly 30 locations. He said the drone received FCC conditional approval in July, which he described as a separate matter from compliance with the National Defense Authorization Act, the rules on what federal agencies and federally funded projects may buy.
The launch comes as the US spray-drone market is unsettled. The Federal Communications Commission banned new models of foreign-made drones and critical components in December 2025, and a newer FCC proposal could reach models already approved, including those of the Chinese market leader DJI. US Customs and Border Protection has also periodically held DJI shipments over forced-labour allegations, which DJI calls false.
Eric Ringer, president of the American Spray Drone Coalition, said US sales of new spray drones fell from 8,950 in 2024 to 3,711 in 2025, a drop of about 60 percent caused by a lack of supply rather than demand. Binder put the cost of downtime in plain terms: an operator covering 250 acres a day at $15 an acre who waits a week for a part could lose roughly $26,000 of work.
Exedy admits an American-built drone will cost more up front and did not give a price. Binder said the company is raising the share of US-made content and is also developing larger and smaller payload models.
Photo: R6, State & Private Forestry, Forest Health Protection / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
Source: AgFunderNews
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