Jaunt Air Mobility announce plans to launch design and manufacturing operations in Canada

Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty plans to open design and man­u­fac­tur­ing oper­a­tions in Cana­da, appoint­ing Eric Côté as Pres­i­dent to lead the com­pa­ny’s oper­a­tions in the coun­try.

The announce­ment is the first step in expand­ing Jaun­t’s glob­al reach, with Côté to assist with engag­ing strate­gic invest­ment part­ners and plan­ning Jaun­t’s Cana­di­an oper­a­tions. The com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing its eVTOL air­craft, called the Jaunt Jour­ney, which has a planned roadmap to achieve full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by 2026. It has a range of 80 miles, trav­el­ling at speeds of up to 175mph.

Côté brings CEO expe­ri­ence from his time at Soucy Group, which is an engi­neer­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing firm in the defense, pow­er, sports, indus­tri­al and agri­cul­tur­al sec­tors.

Before Soucy Group, Côté spent 15 years with Bom­bardier Aero­space in senior-lev­el posi­tions and was involved in set­ting up new man­u­fac­tur­ing and assem­bly orga­ni­za­tions in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. 

Com­ment­ing on his new role, he said: “Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty is devel­op­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of air­craft that will meet the grow­ing demand for faster urban and region­al trav­el.

“The Jaunt Jour­ney will meet the high­est safe­ty stan­dards and elim­i­nate Green House Gas­es (GHG) emis­sions. One air­craft can elim­i­nate the equiv­a­lent of 95 cars of GHG in con­gest­ed city dri­ving con­di­tions. The air­craft will offer a solu­tion for urban air mobil­i­ty, car­go deliv­ery, med­ical trans­port, and human­i­tar­i­an aid.”

Mar­tin Peryea, CEO of Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty, adds: “Cana­da and Québec offer a wide range of oppor­tu­ni­ties stem­ming from a long his­to­ry in the aero­space indus­try, includ­ing an expe­ri­enced work­force and glob­al sup­pli­ers. Canada’s aero­space indus­try is known for export, and we intend to cap­i­tal­ize on that reach. Cana­da is a glob­al leader in devel­op­ing and pro­mot­ing clean tech­nol­o­gy and this is aligned with our core val­ues.

“Eric brings sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence in man­ag­ing organ­i­sa­tions and grow­ing organ­i­sa­tions to meet cus­tomer needs world­wide and Jaunt’s Cana­di­an oper­a­tions will cre­ate many new jobs in man­u­fac­tur­ing and engi­neer­ing and intro­duce a new, sus­tain­able, avi­a­tion ecosys­tem. We are com­mit­ted to a sus­tain­able envi­ron­ment with our green and inno­v­a­tive air­craft.”

Cana­da con­tin­ues to make great progress in bring­ing advanced air mobil­i­ty to the coun­try’s cities. One of the organ­i­sa­tions help­ing to accel­er­ate progress is the Cana­di­an Air Mobil­i­ty Con­sor­tium, which aims to build an ecosys­tem of nation­al col­lab­o­ra­tion which is prof­itable, sus­tain­able and equi­table.

It revealed four major projects this year, which includ­ed nam­ing Toron­to and the Ontario region as the sec­ond launch mar­ket after Van­cou­ver, and now has 50 mem­ber com­pa­nies span­ning indus­try, gov­ern­ment, cap­i­tal and acad­e­mia.

The Cana­di­an Air Mobil­i­ty Con­sori­tum (CAAM) has praised this lat­est move by Jaunt. When shar­ing the news on LinkedIn, it said: “As an inte­gral mem­ber of the CAAM ecosys­tem, the lead­er­ship behind Eric Côté & Mar­tin Peryea are catalysing the future of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty in Cana­da.

“This expan­sion is the sign that Cana­da will con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from attract­ing glob­al invest­ment enroute to our vision of con­nect­ing Cana­da and the world through the future of flight.”

Addi­tion­al­ly, Hori­zon Air­craft is con­tin­u­ing to work on its Cavorite X5, which has a patent­ed fan-in-wing design and will be able to trav­el 500km at speeds of 450km/h. The com­pa­ny’s co-founder and CEO Bran­don Robin­son spoke to eVTOL Insights about the com­pa­ny’s vision as part of an in-depth inter­view.