Diehl Aviation to supply Flight Control Computers for Volocopter’s VoloCity eVTOL

Diehl Aero­space, a unit of Ger­man aero­space sup­pli­er Diehl Avi­a­tion, has signed a con­tract to devel­op and pro­duce the pri­ma­ry and back-up flight con­trol com­put­ers for Volo­copter’s VoloC­i­ty eVTOL air­craft.

Mak­ing the announce­ment today (Thurs­day), Diehl Avi­a­tion said the agree­ment will ‘mark the com­pa­ny’s entry into the mar­ket seg­ment of urban air mobil­i­ty’.

A state­ment added: “While the com­pa­ny has firm­ly estab­lished itself as lead­ing sup­pli­er of cab­in inte­ri­ors and air­craft sys­tems to man­u­fac­tur­ers of com­mer­cial air­craft and mil­i­tary plat­forms, the urban air mobil­i­ty mar­ket has been iden­ti­fied as a per­fect addi­tion to its port­fo­lio.

“Diehl Aero­space has a sol­id track record of pro­vid­ing flight con­trol sys­tems to major air­lines and air­craft for decades and sees great prospects for apply­ing its exper­tise in this field also to eVTOL plat­forms. The emerg­ing urban air mobil­i­ty mar­ket is expect­ed to play a major role in urban mobil­i­ty solu­tions in the future, par­tic­u­lar­ly in com­bi­na­tion with elec­tric propul­sion and mobile IT ser­vices.”

Diehl Avi­a­tion is a sup­pli­er of air­craft sys­tem and cab­in solu­tions, with clients includ­ing Air­bus, Boe­ing, Bom­bardier, Embraer, as well as air­lines and oper­a­tors of com­mer­cial and busi­ness air­craft.

In addi­tion to the appli­ca­tion of its flight con­trol exper­tise to the eVTOL plat­form, the com­pa­ny said it is also look­ing at new mar­ket poten­tials for oth­er prod­ucts with­in its port­fo­lio, such as cab­in inte­ri­ors and inte­gra­tion capa­bil­i­ties.

Ini­tial devel­op­ment work has start­ed already at Diehl Avi­a­tion sites for the Volo­copter work pack­age, with cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Flight Con­trol Com­put­ers for Volo­copter expect­ed for 2021. The first flight and entry-into-ser­vice of the VoloC­i­ty is expect­ed with­in the next two to four years.

The VoloC­i­ty is being devel­oped accord­ing to the high stan­dards and require­ments of the Euro­pean Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA). It is pow­ered by nine recharge­able bat­ter­ies, pow­er­ing 18 motors, with a bat­tery swap time of five min­utes.

It has capac­i­ty for two pas­sen­gers with hand lug­gage, and can trav­el up to 35km at a top speed of 110km/h.