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Geely to display Volocopter’s 2X eVTOL aircraft at Auto Shanghai as both companies target air taxi services in China

A full-size mod­el of Volo­copter’s 2X eVTOL air taxi will go on dis­play in Chi­na for the first time this week, as the Ger­man start­up works with Geely Tech­nol­o­gy Group to help bring urban air mobil­i­ty ser­vices to the coun­try’s cities.

The 2X will be at Geely’s booth at the Shang­hai Inter­na­tion­al Auto­mo­bile Indus­try Exhi­bi­tion, which is tak­ing place from April 21st to 28th. Also known as Auto Shang­hai — the event is one of the world’s biggest auto­mo­bile fairs and vis­i­tors attend­ing will have the chance to learn more about this new form of trans­port.

Volo­copter and Geely entered into a joint ven­ture in 2019, after Geely Hold­ing Group led a Series C Fund­ing Round which raised €50 mil­lion. Since then, Volo­copter has been using its exper­tise to iden­ti­fy where eVTOL air taxi ser­vices could be intro­duced in the coun­try.

Flo­ri­an Reuter, CEO Volo­copter, said: “Geely’s mar­ket lead­er­ship in Chi­na and for­ward-think­ing approach to expand­ing mobil­i­ty options make them a great strate­gic investor. They are an invalu­able part­ner for bring­ing urban air mobil­i­ty to Chi­na – one of the most promis­ing mar­kets for the UAM indus­try glob­al­ly.”

Volo­copter’s 2X is known for its safe­ty and excep­tion­al­ly low noise emis­sion. The air­craft has nine exchange­able bat­ter­ies pow­er­ing 18 rotors and the design gives the sys­tem a remark­ably high redun­dan­cy, ensur­ing that even if one or sev­er­al rotors fail, the air­craft can land safe­ly.

In 2019, Volo­copter 2X suc­cess­ful­ly flew over Singapore’s Mari­na Bay and showed that pilot­ed elec­tric air taxi inte­gra­tion in air traf­fic man­age­ment (ATM) and unmanned traf­fic man­age­ment (UTM) was pos­si­ble.

The two-seater mod­el, which has pre­vi­ous­ly flown sev­er­al test cam­paigns, rep­re­sents the elec­tric air taxi vision Volo­copter and Geely Tech­nol­o­gy Group aim to intro­duce in Chi­na.

For future ser­vices, Volo­copter will use its fifth-gen­er­a­tion air­craft, the VoloC­i­ty, which is cur­rent­ly in the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process with Euro­pean Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA). It will have an increased speed of 110 km/h and longer flight dura­tion of 35 min­utes — after account­ing for reserve bat­tery and head­wind.  

Char­lie Jing, CEO of Aerofu­gia, a sub­sidiary of Geely Tech­nol­o­gy Group, said: Volo­copter is the pio­neer and leader of safe, sus­tain­able, and prac­ti­cal eVTOL solu­tions for air taxi ser­vices in cities around the world. Togeth­er, we will have both the tech­nol­o­gy and means of pro­duc­tion to launch urban air mobil­i­ty ecosys­tems in Chi­nese cities.”  

Geely Tech­nol­o­gy Group is an inno­va­tion-dri­ven group, focus­ing on cor­po­rate invest­ment and oper­a­tion. As a cor­po­rate investor and oper­a­tor in MaaS tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor, the Group has built a diver­si­fied ‘6+X’ busi­ness port­fo­lio. ‘6’ refers to the Group’s major busi­ness unit which cov­ers Light-weight Mate­r­i­al Tech­nol­o­gy, Bat­tery Swap­ping Ecosys­tem, Ener­gy Tech­nol­o­gy, Gen­er­al Avi­a­tion, Com­mer­cial Aero­space, and Motor­cy­cles. 

It has made sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment in gen­er­al avi­a­tion with Aerofu­gia being the key plat­form to car­ry out relat­ed busi­ness­es. As a lead­ing solu­tion provider and oper­a­tor with strong engi­neer­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing and ser­vice capa­bil­i­ties, Aerofu­gia has earned its rep­u­ta­tion and name in the high-tech gen­er­al avi­a­tion indus­try. 

Volo­copter has already sig­nalled its inten­tion to launch eVTOL air­craft ser­vices in Asia as ear­ly as 2023, when it con­firmed Sin­ga­pore would be one of its first loca­tions in an announce­ment last year

Addi­tion­al­ly, the Ger­man start­up raised €200 mil­lion in Series D Fund­ing at the start of this year and is push­ing ahead with con­cur­rent cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its VoloC­i­ty with both the FAA and EASA, which would bring its air taxi ser­vices to the USA.

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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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