Volocopter announced as first industrial partner to test eVTOL aircraft in Paris Region

Volo­copter has been cho­sen as the first indus­tri­al part­ner in the Paris Region’s Urban Air Mobil­i­ty project, which will allow the com­pa­ny to test its VoloC­i­ty eVTOL air taxi in the French cap­i­tal next year.

It fol­lows the announce­ment by Paris Region, Group ADP and RATP Group to set up an Urban Air Mobil­i­ty indus­try branch, with a focus on eVTOL, and also use the 2024 Olympic and Par­a­lympic Games as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to involve the entire indus­try.

Test­ing will be done at an air­field in Pon­toise, a north­west com­mune about 35km from the cen­tre of Paris. In coop­er­a­tion with DCAG — France’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty — all the nec­es­sary arrange­ments will be made at the start of 2021, so flight tests can begin in June.

Flo­ri­an Reuter, CEO of Volo­copter, said: “We are incred­i­bly excit­ed to be the eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­er of choice in the Paris region’s Urban Air Mobil­i­ty project. We will open our first com­mer­cial air taxi routes in the next 2–3 years and are excit­ed to have a poten­tial launch­ing part­ner here in Europe.”

Addi­tion­al­ly, in order to con­struct an ecosys­tem of large groups, SMEs, start-ups, lab­o­ra­to­ries, and uni­ver­si­ties in the Paris Region over the long term, a world­wide call for expres­sions of inter­est has been launched with the sup­port of the Choose Paris Region agency.

This will cov­er all com­po­nents of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty, from vehi­cle devel­op­ment, urban infra­struc­ture, oper­a­tors for sup­plies of inter­modal solu­tions, air­space inte­gra­tions for sup­pli­ers of unmanned traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tems and accept­abil­i­ty for lab­o­ra­to­ries or research insti­tutes deal­ing with social and envi­ron­men­tal issues.

Appli­ca­tions will be open from 1st Octo­ber to 13th Novem­ber, and avail­able on www.reinventairmobility.com. The select­ed projects will then be announced on 18th Decem­ber 2020.

Franck Mar­gain, Pres­i­dent of Choose Paris Region, said: “The struc­tur­ing of an Urban Air Mobil­i­ty indus­try around the ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (eVTOL) air­craft is vital for the attrac­tive­ness of Paris Region. The growth of this indus­try will con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly indus­tri­al solu­tions and offer Paris Region a unique mix of urban mul­ti­modal trans­porta­tion sys­tems.”

Valérie Pécresse, Pres­i­dent of Paris Region, added: “The struc­tur­ing and devel­op­ment of an Air Mobil­i­ty branch on the air­field of Pon­toise – Cormeilles-en-Vex­in is both con­sis­tent with the Recov­ery Plan ini­ti­at­ed by Paris Region, and in line with the key take­aways of Paris Region recent COP 2020 con­fer­ence.

“It also falls with­in the scope and pri­or­i­ties of the 2024 Olympic and Par­a­lympic games. As a result, this event rep­re­sents an invalu­able oppor­tu­ni­ty to involve the entire Avi­a­tion Indus­try and demon­strate the unique qual­i­ties of Paris Region as an area of ref­er­ence with­in the glob­al Urban Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket.”

As a non-prof­it gov­ern­men­tal agency, Choose Paris Region works with local pub­lic enti­ties to pro­vide free tai­lor-made ser­vices. Every year, with a team of 80 ded­i­cat­ed pro­fes­sion­als across Europe, the US and Chi­na, Choose Paris Region sup­ports more than 1,000 inter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies look­ing to grow their busi­ness in the Paris Region.

Edward Ark­wright, Deputy CEO of Groupe ADP, added: “Today, we aim at explor­ing and enabling the devel­op­ment of all poten­tial futures of a decar­bonised and inno­v­a­tive avi­a­tion.

“Urban Air Mobil­i­ty, dri­ven by an all-elec­tric vehi­cle capa­ble of a ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing, will be able to take-off and accel­er­ate its devel­op­ment through the estab­lish­ment of a sand­box at our Pon­toise air­field, a unique test­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty in Europe.

“In part­ner­ship with Paris Region and RATP group, and in the frame­work of an inter­na­tion­al call for expres­sion of inter­est, we are strong­ly posi­tioned to fed­er­ate a unique ecosys­tem in Paris Region, by com­bin­ing our infra­struc­tures assets, our know-how and exper­tise in terms of mobil­i­ty and our ter­ri­to­r­i­al anchor­ing.”

This lat­est news fol­lows Volo­copter announc­ing yes­ter­day (Tues­day) that it had signed an agree­ment with Japan Air­lines (JAL) to help launch eVTOL ser­vices in Japan.

Volo­copter is devel­op­ing its VoloC­i­ty air taxi and per­formed the first-ever manned flight of a pure­ly elec­tric mul­ti­copter in 2011. It has since show­cased numer­ous pub­lic flights with its full-scale air­craft, and the most notable have been at Singapore’s Mari­na Bay in Octo­ber 2019 and the world’s first autonomous eVTOL flight in Dubai 2017.

Volo­copter is also devel­op­ing prod­ucts for the logis­tics and pre­ci­sion agri­cul­ture space with their Volo­Drone.