Jaunt Air Mobility and Varon Vehicles team up to bring urban air mobility to Latin America

Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty and Varon Vehi­cles have announced a joint col­lab­o­ra­tion to help accel­er­ate the intro­duc­tion of urban air mobil­i­ty in Latin Amer­i­ca, which will set the build­ing blocks for ear­ly eVTOL air­craft demon­stra­tions in the region.

eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er Jaunt is cur­rent­ly design­ing and devel­op­ing its Jour­ney mod­el and plans to be oper­a­tional by 2026, with demon­stra­tions expect­ed as ear­ly as 2023. This lat­est part­ner­ship extends the com­pa­ny’s pres­ence across the world, after announc­ing a sim­i­lar agree­ment with Ital­ian start­up Walle Mobil­i­ty ear­li­er this month.

Simon Briceno, Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer for Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty, said: “We are pleased to work with Varon Vehi­cles as they have devel­oped a nov­el approach to address the chal­lenges in Urban Air Mobil­i­ty. The Jaunt Jour­ney air­craft will be one of the safest, qui­etest and most effi­cient air­craft; meet­ing the high­est lev­el of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards. Our patent­ed Reduced rotor Oper­at­ing Speed Air­craft offers inher­ent safe­ty and a smooth com­fort­able ride for pas­sen­gers.”

Over the course of the year, Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty will work with Varon Vehi­cles to under­stand the unique trans­porta­tion needs in Latin Amer­i­can cities — such as Bogo­ta and Carta­ge­na — and will help define the oper­a­tions and inte­gra­tion of its Jour­ney air­craft into ser­vice.

Varon Vehi­cles is devel­op­ing a series of ver­ti­ports con­nect­ed to each oth­er via well-defined low alti­tude vir­tu­al lanes through which these air vehi­cles will fly.

Ver­ti­ports will be placed both inside and out­side exist­ing urban areas to alle­vi­ate the pres­sure for city growth, pro­vid­ing trans­porta­tion ser­vices to mul­ti­ple cus­tomers like logis­tics com­pa­nies, tourism com­pa­nies, hos­pi­tals, law enforce­ment and trans­porta­tion net­work com­pa­nies (TNC’s) for air taxi ser­vices, all with­out the need for per-mile phys­i­cal con­struc­tion.

Com­ment­ing on the part­ner­ship, Felipe Varon, CEO and Founder of Varon Vehi­cles, and who is also recog­nised in the recent­ly pub­lished eVTOL Insights Pow­er Book, said: “This is what we call the Varon Vehi­cles Infra­struc­ture Net­work: It’s a new form of mobil­i­ty infra­struc­ture.

“Tech­nol­o­gy now makes it pos­si­ble to tap into unused low alti­tude air­space over cities and sub­urbs in an envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly man­ner to pro­vide poten­tial­ly dis­rup­tive trans­porta­tion ser­vices and invalu­able con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

“We have cho­sen to start imple­men­ta­tion in Colom­bia, where we’re work­ing hand in hand with the Colom­bian civ­il avi­a­tion author­i­ty and a host of region­al indus­try part­ners, as we bring togeth­er tech­nolo­gies, like Jaunt’s, for imple­men­ta­tion.”