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Q&A: Walle Mobility and Jaunt Air Mobility to develop first urban air mobility routes in Italy as part of new partnership

Fol­low­ing the announce­ment that Walle Mobil­i­ty and Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty are to team up and work togeth­er on devel­op­ing the first urban air mobil­i­ty ser­vices in Italy, we spoke to Mar­co Pugliese, Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer at Walle Mobil­i­ty, and Simon Briceno, Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer at Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty, about the excit­ing news in more detail.

Q: Are you able to tell me more about this part­ner­ship between Walle Mobil­i­ty and Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty. How did it come about?

Mar­co Pugliese: “At Walle, we’re going to be an advanced air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tor and were look­ing for an air­craft for our cus­tomers to fly on. We did a search and looked for some­thing that could fit our needs and came across Jaunt. It was like love at first sight, because they have is an air­craft that fits our needs and roadmap. 

“Many oth­ers in the indus­try are try­ing to make an eVTOL air­craft suit­able for the advanced air mobil­i­ty net­works and it is going to take longer and longer to be ready; Jaunt has an air­craft which is already fly­ing and its test­bed has been for six years. So we were look­ing for some­thing we could use as soon as pos­si­ble since we want to start by 2025, 2026 at the lat­est.”

Simon Briceno: “When we start­ed speak­ing to Walle, I first spoke with Mar­co and what real­ly jumped out for me was the peo­ple and the lev­el of knowl­edge and under­stand­ing of the tech­nol­o­gy. As Mar­co point­ed out, he’s a pilot too so it’s nice to talk with some­one who under­stands the air­craft.

“The air­craft is the focus of the part­ner­ship, but the things that stood out were that under­stand­ing of the ben­e­fits the air­craft can bring, the vision that Walle has for urban and advanced air mobil­i­ty in Italy, and Italy itself from a geog­ra­phy stand­point. We see a lot of poten­tial in this mar­ket and dif­fer­ent types of mar­kets. 

“As well as the amount of work they’ve done with the pub­lic and local author­i­ties, all of that is impor­tant to make sure it hap­pens since it’s a new mode of trans­port. They’ve worked hard to devel­op the rela­tion­ships that are going to be crit­i­cal for this to hap­pen.

“For us, it was a great oppor­tu­ni­ty that we def­i­nite­ly want­ed to take advan­tage of.”

Q: Simon, am I right in think­ing this kind of part­ner­ship is Jaunt’s first one in Europe?

SB: “This is the first offi­cial part­ner­ship we have from a ser­vice or oper­a­tion stand­point in Europe. We have oth­er part­ner­ships rel­a­tive to the air­craft devel­op­ment side but we feel that this was a fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty. Italy is a great start­ing point in Europe and we envi­sion it grow­ing, but for now this real­ly remains our focus and who knows where we will go from here.”

Q: Mar­co, are you able to tell us what your planned goals and objec­tives are for this part­ner­ship?

MP: “The tar­get for us is 2025, 2026 at the lat­est because we have the Milan Corti­na Olympic Games and we’d like to take the chance to intro­duce this ser­vice to the world. The road to get there is a long jour­ney and we believe that we need Jaunt to stay close to us. We need a strong air­craft to be devel­oped and made using the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. We will sure­ly help them intro­duce this air­craft to EASA and it should­n’t be hard because they are already doing a great job with the FAA.

“It wasn’t just about join­ing with a com­pa­ny on the oth­er side of the world. They already have some input in Europe and we strong­ly believe that the roadmap will be very long. If we can work togeth­er, it will be eas­i­er for us both. We are chang­ing the world with this and need many hands to make it work.”

SB: “We feel very con­fi­dent from the stand­point of our cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, devel­op­ment and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process and that time­frame is real­is­tic for this type of air­craft. Between now and then, as we work close­ly with Walle, we do have a full-scale, pre-pro­duc­tion demon­stra­tor that is being devel­oped and will be ready in a cou­ple of years.

“And then there are oth­er test arti­cles that we have to devel­op for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pur­pos­es, so there is def­i­nite­ly an oppor­tu­ni­ty over the next five years to work togeth­er and do more spe­cif­ic demon­stra­tions that are real­ly crit­i­cal from a pub­lic accep­tance stand­point. 

“The Access Sky­ways alliance we formed has a spe­cif­ic focus on infra­struc­ture and we think that is one of the crit­i­cal ecosys­tem ele­ments that has to be looked at ear­ly. It takes time, whether in the US or Europe, and we need to work with Walle to iden­ti­fy the sup­port they need from this alliance if any, to make sure all of that is in place for the type of oper­a­tions they want to put into place.”

Q: Mar­co, we spoke about pub­lic accep­tance in Italy in our recent pod­cast. What will this part­ner­ship be doing to address this cru­cial aspect of the ecosys­tem?

MP: For us, this is a crit­i­cal point. Before we can make peo­ple fly with us, we have to make them under­stand the way they will fly. The work we are doing with Jaunt for exam­ple is that we are try­ing to design the cab­in inte­ri­or because at this moment in time, the cus­tomer can­not imag­ine how they will fly. We want the pas­sen­gers to touch the air­craft they are going to fly in. As Simon said, in two years from now we might have an air­craft around here in Italy.

“Here at Walle, we are build­ing a mock-up with real inte­ri­or based on Jaunt’s ROSA air­craft dimen­sions, and want to show the pub­lic the real space that will be avail­able on the air­craft when using our ser­vice. We want our cus­tomers to get used to it and with this part­ner­ship, we will be able to make the best mock-up which is very close to real­i­ty.

“The idea is to bring a road­show with this mock-up air­craft, going round the cities and show­ing it to the pub­lic. This will be in Italy first and then we will move into Europe. At this moment, thanks to Jaunt’s capa­bil­i­ties we will be plan­ning some routes — for exam­ple from Milan Malpen­sa [Air­port] to the city cen­tre, so we plan to show the mock-up in this city first and then move to Rome and Naples.

“Italy is sur­round­ed by islands and if you want to reach one, it would take 1–2 hours by fer­ry. In a Jaunt air­craft, your jour­ney will be just 15 min­utes. Some peo­ple don’t think this is pos­si­ble, because they just have the idea to jump onto a fer­ry for two hours. That’s fun, but advanced air mobil­i­ty is faster, and that’s the point that will change peo­ple’s mind.”

Q: Simon, from a Jaunt per­spec­tive it must feel great to know you’re going to help intro­duce this new way of trav­el to those liv­ing in Italy and increas­ing the areas where peo­ple can trav­el via eVTOL air­craft?

SB: “Absolute­ly. We’re in an era of elec­tric avi­a­tion and at the cusp of mak­ing it a real­i­ty. We real­ly envi­sion that the future is in the air. A lot of peo­ple have already brought into that, but it’s impor­tant to ensure that we don’t force this onto peo­ple. 

“It’s impor­tant they accept it for the val­ue it brings them in their every­day lives. If you put your­self in the minds of the gen­er­al pub­lic who use pub­lic trans­porta­tion ser­vices, there are some very key things they think about.

“Most peo­ple may think of the eco­nom­ics, how much their tick­et price will be and assume the air­craft is safe. Safe­ty is one that they may not think ini­tial­ly or assume because it’s a com­mer­cial air­craft and has been cer­ti­fied to the high­est com­mer­cial avi­a­tion stan­dards. 

“There’s that trust fac­tor and so one of Jaunt’s com­pa­ny mis­sions is to pro­mote the inher­ent safe­ty of our design. That’s going to have to be demon­strat­ed in many ways with the pub­lic and I think that engage­ment between now and its entry into ser­vice with the pub­lic is real­ly impor­tant and once that clicks, it’s like cars and oth­er modes of trans­porta­tion. Peo­ple are going to real­ly use this ser­vice and oppor­tu­ni­ty to trans­form their every­day lives. 

“We’re real­ly sav­ing them a tremen­dous amount of time, but we’re not there yet. We have to get to a point that we can get that buy-in.”

Q: Simon, what oth­er ser­vices will Jaunt be help­ing Walle with as part of this part­ner­ship?

SB: “The air­craft itself is one thing, but there is a lot of air­craft sup­port­a­bil­i­ty that has to hap­pen. We are work­ing very close­ly and going to be mak­ing an announce­ment soon on anoth­er Tier 1 aero­space sup­pli­er in sim­u­la­tion and flight train­ing. That’s all impor­tant. These air­craft are ini­tial­ly going to be pilot­ed. The air­craft will be elec­tric for cer­tain mar­kets, and will require MRO and sup­port. Those are things we are active­ly pur­su­ing because we’re the vehi­cle provider. 

“As you expand away from the air­craft and into the ecosys­tem, the rea­son we start­ed Access Sky­ways — a part­ner­ship with five com­pa­nies which are experts in their own domain specif­i­cal­ly relat­ed to infra­struc­ture, is because of how crit­i­cal that is — not just from a ver­ti­port stand­point, but an elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, util­i­ty and ener­gy provider stand­point as well.

“It’s a joint alliance of com­pa­nies, with exper­tise in this domain, and ser­vices and capa­bil­i­ty that can be pro­vid­ed to Walle. At this point, we’re not real­ly look­ing at that but will be cov­er­ing a lot of those details as our part­ner­ship matures and we start to get deep­er into the design and plan­ning for oper­a­tions. Those items will emerge and whether it’s Access Sky­ways or oth­ers that pro­vide sup­port, we’ll be ready to do that.”

Q: Mar­co, what does this part­ner­ship mean to you and the Walle Mobil­i­ty team, con­sid­er­ing the start­up was only launched in ear­ly 2020?

MP: “For us, this is bring­ing us up. Thanks to Jaunt, we now have some­thing we are work­ing on and start­ing to demon­strate to poten­tial investors. It’s a key change.

“We have to work togeth­er to change the world. Once we approach the ver­ti­port design, we will come back to Jaunt and togeth­er with our joint net­works, will build the best ver­ti­port. 

“That is the advan­tage to make this part­ner­ship soon, we did not want to wait. Jaunt has made the dif­fer­ence for us and we are very hap­py to have announced this part­ner­ship.”

Q: Simon, is there any­thing else you’d like to add?

SB: “We don’t want to get detailed right now, as we want to save a lit­tle bit for a future announce­ment. But we’re work­ing side by side to get the ball rolling. All of these areas we men­tioned — the air­craft, out­side of the air­craft, pub­lic accep­tance — there are still quite a lot of chal­lenges. 

“We’re excit­ed and have been work­ing since last year, but yes­ter­day was our big reveal. That doesn’t change our pace, we’re con­tin­u­ing to be com­mit­ted to each oth­er.”

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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