UAM Team launched in South Korea to develop air taxis by 2025

A pub­lic-pri­vate con­sul­ta­tion com­pa­ny, which includes Hyundai Motor Group, has been set up in South Korea to help devel­op and com­mer­cialise drone taxis in the coun­try by 2025.

As report­ed in Aju Busi­ness Dai­ly, the launch of ‘Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Team Korea’ also fea­tures Han­wha Sys­tems, Kore­an Air, SK Tele­com and Doosan Mobil­i­ty Solu­tions, and is under a gov­ern­ment road map unveiled on 4th June which includes plans to com­mer­cialise autonomous flights by 2035.

An inau­gu­ra­tion cer­e­mo­ny was led by the Min­is­ter of Land, Infra­struc­ture and Trans­port on 24th June, where 40 com­pa­nies, research groups and state bod­ies signed an agree­ment to imple­ment the coun­try’s UAM road map.

A spe­cial law will put in place to intro­duce an eco-sys­tem cov­er­ing per­son­al air vehi­cles ahead of oth­er coun­tries, with the gov­ern­ment plan­ning to pre­pare oper­at­ing stan­dards by 2024.

In a state­ment, Min­is­ter Kim Hyun-mee said: “South Korea is the first coun­try to pre­pare a gov­ern­ment-lev­el road map and cre­ate a pol­i­cy com­mu­ni­ty in which the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors par­tic­i­pate in order to realise UAM. We will spare no sup­port and efforts to help Kore­an-style UAM grow into a world stan­dard.”

Hyundai unveiled its own eVTOL air­craft, the SA‑1, at CES 2020 ear­li­er this year, after announc­ing it was join­ing forces with ride-hail­ing firm Uber to launch an air taxi ser­vice — with the aim of being oper­a­tional by 2023.

The air taxi can car­ry up to four pas­sen­gers and fly on trips up to 60 miles (100km), at an alti­tude of between 1,000–2,000ft.

It will be pilot­ed ini­tial­ly, before even­tu­al­ly becom­ing autonomous, and will only need between five and sev­en min­utes to recharge – accord­ing to the auto­mo­tive giant.

And in July 2019, Han­wha Sys­tems announced a $25 mil­lion equi­ty invest­ment in K4 Aero­nau­tics, a U.S. per­son­al air vehi­cle devel­op­er. This fol­lowed the acqui­si­tion of a 30 per­cent stake in Overair, an Amer­i­can eVTOL com­pa­ny which is a spin off from aero­space man­u­fac­tur­er Karem Air­craft, which spe­cialis­es in advanced tilt-rotor trans­port air­craft.