Q&A: Volocopter CEO Florian Reuter provides additional insight into its new VoloConnect eVTOL aircraft

After Volo­copter revealed its new long-range eVTOL air­craft, Volo­Con­nect at EBACE Con­nect last week, com­pa­ny CEO Flo­ri­an Reuter took part in a short Q&A after the press con­fer­ence, where he pro­vid­ed more insight into the air­craft and its future role.

Q: Where does the devel­op­ment of the Volo­Con­nect stand and when are we going to see a first pro­to­type?

Flo­ri­an Reuter: “We’ve been work­ing on this for years now and you can already see a first patent pub­lished that we filed some time ago. We have been fly­ing mul­ti­ple scale mod­els of the Volo­Con­nect so far. What you saw on the video was a flight of the scale mod­el where we were show­ing ver­ti­cal flight tran­si­tion phase as well as for­ward flight already, so that’s what is ongo­ing and we’re work­ing towards fly­ing full-scale pro­to­types. Our team is head­quar­tered in Munich and we expect to be com­ing back to you with news and full-scale footage soon.”

Q: What is the expect­ed tim­ing for the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Volo­Con­nect?

FR: “Based on all of the expe­ri­ence we have assem­bled in our coop­er­a­tion with EASA over the past few years in the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme for the VoloC­i­ty, the Volo­Con­nect will be cer­ti­fied to the same safe­ty stan­dard which is the SC-VTOL here in Europe, which will then be accept­ed by oth­er author­i­ties around the globe. We already have many of these agree­ments in place.

“Based on these expe­ri­ences, we expect to be ready with the Volo­Con­nect and finalise the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme around 2026, with entry into ser­vice for 2026.”

Q: Is Volo­copter going to be an oper­a­tor and is it going to sell the Volo­Con­nect to oth­er oper­a­tors?

FR: “We have a very clear, long term strat­e­gy at Volo­copter, in which we want to be oper­at­ing var­i­ous vehi­cles and serv­ing the urban domain. Already sev­er­al years ago, we have clear­ly seen the trade offs between mul­ti rotor designs and dif­fer­ent cruise and tilt designs. We have delib­er­ate­ly cho­sen to start off with a mul­ti­ro­tor, the VoloC­i­ty design, because this is where the dis­rup­tion will start. And this is where the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion thresh­old will be over­come first.

“We will start serv­ing the sin­gle and dou­ble pas­sen­ger mar­ket, the inner city mar­ket on the short range. There of course are oth­er mar­ket seg­ments that are very attrac­tive to us, but in line with this long term strat­e­gy, we will also oper­ate the Volo­Con­nect togeth­er with our part­ners in dif­fer­ent for­mats around the world.

“In some areas, we will be oper­at­ing stand­alone with our own oper­at­ing enti­ties and in oth­ers we will be part­ner­ing up with local com­pa­nies, like for exam­ple in Chi­na where we have a joint ven­ture with Geely already in place for the oper­a­tion in the largest met­ro­pol­i­tan areas. So yes, we will be oper­at­ing the Volo­Con­nect togeth­er with our part­ners and our­selves as well.”

Q: What about the bat­tery devel­op­ment for all three of Volocopter’s pro­grammes, but espe­cial­ly the Volo­Con­nect?

FR: “We have a clear phi­los­o­phy at Volo­copter and want to be extreme­ly real­is­tic when it comes to the things we do. If you’re going to a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme with the reg­u­la­tor, you need to show them the tech­nol­o­gy that you mean to apply that’s why you have to do a tech­nol­o­gy freeze at some point.

“The per­for­mance we have com­mu­ni­cat­ed both on the VoloC­i­ty as well as on the Volo­Con­nect is based on today’s bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy of which we know we can cer­ti­fy today. So yes, the per­for­mance that you see is on today’s bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy.

“Of course, we expect to see fur­ther advance­ments in bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy and per­for­mance, which will ulti­mate­ly result in high­er per­for­mance of our vehi­cles in the com­ing years. And once we have those avail­able and have them devel­oped and ver­i­fied con­form­ing accord­ing to the safe­ty stan­dards, we will then incor­po­rate the lat­est bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy into our vehi­cles in a cou­ple of years, there­by improv­ing the per­for­mance.

“It’s not like in pre­vi­ous times where you have cer­ti­fied a cer­tain engine once and then you con­tin­ue in your run­ning that engine for decades. We expect to see con­tin­ued improve­ment in the propul­sion tech­nol­o­gy going for­ward and have already dis­cussed with EASA and oth­er reg­u­la­tors of what this process of recer­ti­fi­ca­tion to newest stan­dards and new­er tech­nol­o­gy will look like.

“So that is what we expect going for­ward. I think in terms of the entry into ser­vice for the Volo­Con­nect, you might see more aggres­sive time­lines for sim­i­lar con­cepts. Based on our expe­ri­ence and on the real­is­tic plan we have for the devel­op­ment and the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of this air­craft, we found 2026 to be a real­is­tic time­line and feel pret­ty con­fi­dent we will be one of the ear­li­er vehi­cles of that design on the mar­ket as well.”

Q: Is Volo­copter plan­ning to build its own ver­ti­ports, or use heli­ports instead?

FR: “So we’re look­ing at this in stages. Ini­tial­ly, in order to be able to offer our ser­vices in a giv­en city. We’re hap­py to use exist­ing heli­copter infra­struc­ture. We are ful­ly com­pat­i­ble with exist­ing air­ports and we could retro­fit them with a charg­ing sta­tion that we need for our bat­ter­ies. “

“Going for­ward, we want to make sure we can offer the same fan­tas­tic cus­tomer expe­ri­ence no mat­ter where the cus­tomer uses our ser­vices around the world, mean­ing we will work towards hav­ing our infra­struc­ture stan­dards applied in as many cities and in as many Volo­Ports as pos­si­ble.

“We have designed the tech­ni­cal and design spec­i­fi­ca­tions for these Volo­Port infra­struc­tures and we are work­ing with part­ners to imple­ment them in cities around the world. We are not going to invest into the infra­struc­ture our­selves, only in rare excep­tion­al cas­es. The gen­er­al rule for land­ing infra­struc­ture is we do not invest our­selves, we part­ner.”

Q: Is the Volo­Con­nect pro­gramme ful­ly fund­ed already, or is it going to be con­nect­ed with extra funds Volo­copter con­tin­ues to raise?

FR: “As you have seen in the last Volo­copter financ­ing round we raised more than $240 mil­lion. We see a huge inter­est from the investor com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing the pub­lic invest­ment com­mu­ni­ty, and have wit­nessed sev­er­al com­pa­nies in the eVTOL space already announc­ing they’re going pub­lic. We’re absolute­ly con­fi­dent there is enough aware­ness and val­i­da­tion of the grow­ing demand for these types of ser­vices and tech­nolo­gies.

“I believe there is no oth­er com­pa­ny as well posi­tioned to ben­e­fit from these mar­ket devel­op­ments than Volo­copter. We’re extreme­ly con­fi­dent that we will be able to raise the nec­es­sary fund­ing to com­plete and imple­ment our com­plete strat­e­gy. It is an ambi­tious strat­e­gy; it aims to real­ly con­tin­ue lead­ing this mar­ket going for­ward. So yes, we will con­tin­ue to raise funds and are in very inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions with numer­ous investors for­ward, pur­su­ing dif­fer­ent routes.”

Q: Will the Volo­Con­nect be loud­er than the VoloC­i­ty?

FR: “Good ques­tion. As we’ve always said, there are pros and cons for the var­i­ous con­fig­u­ra­tion deci­sions that you take and at Volo­copter we have always been very aware of those. So, we have decid­ed for the mul­ti­ro­tor design, the VoloC­i­ty, for the intra-urban mis­sion because we believe it’s most impor­tant to have an extreme­ly low noise pro­file there, par­tic­u­lar­ly for a take-off and land­ing of the vehi­cle because that is when you’re clos­est to adja­cent build­ings, neigh­bour­hoods, com­mu­ni­ties and so on.

“And you have to be very effi­cient in the ver­ti­cal flight phas­es. Espe­cial­ly on short hops, you have to be effi­cient in that flight phase because it accounts for much of the flight mis­sion. On the longer flight mis­sion, what’s more crit­i­cal there is that you can reach a longer range, poten­tial­ly offer also a  high­er pay­load, but you do take into account com­pro­mis­es on the noise pro­file par­tic­u­lar­ly at take­off and land­ing, and also on the foot­print and avail­abil­i­ty of land­ing sites that you can fly into. 

“There is no one size fits all approach; you see var­i­ous dif­fer­ent pur­pose-built vehi­cles that are serv­ing dif­fer­ent needs and mar­ket seg­ments. We believe the urban mobil­i­ty sec­tor will advance in a very sim­i­lar way.

“Com­ing back to the ques­tion, the VoloC­i­ty is qui­eter at take­off and land­ing and at over­flight, the Volo­Con­nect is qui­eter, due to the high­er lift ratio that it gets from its wings. How­ev­er, as we are fly­ing over­head, even the VoloC­i­ty at 300ft above you, you will not notice the vehi­cle any­more.

“Just to give you an exam­ple when we were fly­ing pub­licly in Sin­ga­pore, there were some tourists that didn’t know some­thing was going on above their heads and they didn’t even notice the vehi­cle fly­ing.

“That’s how qui­et it is. So, it’s not about absolute noise lev­els, it’s about the sub­jec­tive per­cep­tion of indi­vid­u­als, and we’re absolute­ly con­fi­dent the VoloC­i­ty meets those high­est require­ments for the intra-city mis­sion, and the Volo­Con­nect is qui­et enough for many of those sites and for many of those longer range mis­sions.”

Q: Regard­ing the mode of flight the Volo­Con­nect is going to take, is Volo­copter plan­ning to oper­ate the air­craft ful­ly autonomous­ly from the start of 2026?

FR: “That’s a great ques­tion. Both the VoloC­i­ty and Volo­Con­nect are dri­ven by our pro­pri­etary flight con­trol tech­nol­o­gy which is a great syn­er­gy between the two pro­grammes, where we have to meet the high­est safe­ty require­ments from EASA. They’re both fly by light, as we say fly-by-wire but in our case, it’s poly­mer optic fibres so trans­mit­ting the right sig­nals there.

“These vehi­cles are capa­ble of fly­ing free auto­mat­ed from the start and they are ready to turn ful­ly autonomous as soon as the reg­u­la­tions allow us to do that. It is very dif­fi­cult to pre­dict pre­cise­ly, so we’re pur­su­ing a dual path here in the devel­op­ment of the Volo­Con­nect.

Depend­ing on where the reg­u­la­tion is then, we will decide whether there is a need to offer a pilot­ed ver­sion at the begin­ning, or whether we can go ful­ly autonomous lat­er on. But that is a devi­a­tion we can take pret­ty late on into our devel­op­ment pro­gramme, just as we’re switch­ing between remote­ly con­trolled or auto­mat­ed mode and pilot­ed mode in our 2X Gen­er­a­tion air­craft today. And just as we can do it with our VoloC­i­ty.

“So that is yet to be deter­mined, depend­ing on the pace at which the reg­u­la­tion moves towards full auton­o­my in the dif­fer­ent areas around the world. We’re in a great exchange with the reg­u­la­tors and work­ing with many many dif­fer­ent work­ing groups to advance the abil­i­ty to fly ful­ly autonomous­ly as soon as we can.”

Q: Can you say any­thing about the flight tests with the scale mod­els. How does the tran­si­tion from ver­ti­cal take-off to land­ing to cruise flight work with this par­tic­u­lar air­craft?

FR: “This is a lift and cruise con­fig­u­ra­tion, so we have six elec­tri­cal rotors that are lift­ing the vehi­cle up and then we have two elec­tri­cal propul­sion units that are pro­pelling the vehi­cle for­ward. As we don’t have any tilt­ing ele­ments here, we don’t have that high­ly crit­i­cal flight phase of this tilt­ing mech­a­nism.

“We have the redun­dan­cy of the lift­ing ele­ments, always in full place and there­fore it’s much less com­plex and eas­i­er to cer­ti­fy this con­fig­u­ra­tion than a tilt­ing one. And as I said in some scale mod­els we have already applied our flight con­trols to ful­ly con­trol these manoeu­vres; we have shown them suc­cess­ful­ly and we can’t wait to also show them pub­licly with our full-scale pro­to­type as soon as we’re ready.”

Q: Will the Volo­Con­nect use the same type of tech­nol­o­gy, like elec­tric motors and bat­ter­ies in the VoloC­i­ty. Is it going to be the same pow­er per­for­mance with a dif­fer­ent archi­tec­ture, or is Volo­copter switch­ing to a more advanced tech­nol­o­gy all over?

FR: “It real­ly depends on what exact­ly we are con­sid­er­ing. And yes, there are huge syn­er­gies between the two pro­grammes, both in the tech­nol­o­gy side as well as on the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and the oper­a­tions side. Why am I say­ing this? Because we have to estab­lish the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments with EASA first, in order to then build our cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme for the VoloC­i­ty and you learn quite a lot in this process. This knowl­edge we can direct­ly apply to our Volo­Con­nect activ­i­ties.

“Sec­ond­ly, we have also gained design organ­i­sa­tion approval from EASA, mak­ing us the world’s first and only eVTOL com­pa­ny that has this cer­tifi­cate of DOA in place, which is a pre­req­ui­site to then ulti­mate­ly con­tin­ue to receive the type cer­tifi­cate. This is a cer­tifi­cate that applies to the whole organ­i­sa­tion and the Volo­Con­nect activ­i­ties will be brought under that umbrel­la as we pro­ceed.

“So the syn­er­gies are on the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and oper­a­tion fronts. Both of these vehi­cles are ful­ly inte­grat­ed into VoloIQ, which is our soft­ware plat­form ser­vic­ing the oper­a­tions, main­te­nance and cus­tomer inter­ac­tion of all of our vehi­cles. That of course will be direct­ly inte­grat­ed from the start.

“On the tech­nol­o­gy side, it’s a more dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed pic­ture. Each con­fig­u­ra­tion has its dif­fer­ent require­ments and there’s more of a straight­for­ward adap­tion of our flight con­trols where you need to set the para­me­ters and adjust slight­ly to the dif­fer­ent vehi­cle con­fig­u­ra­tion.

“For exam­ple, on the rotors we have a dif­fer­ent pow­er require­ment on the Volo­Con­nect than we have on the VoloC­i­ty. While the over­all capac­i­ty require­ments and pow­er require­ments of the Volo­Con­nect bat­tery are some­what dif­fer­ent So there are a lot of learn­ings we can apply from one vehi­cle to the oth­er. In many cas­es, we have to adapt to the spe­cif­ic con­fig­u­ra­tion.”

Q: And final­ly, which Euro­pean city will be the first to have VTOL urban air mobil­i­ty ser­vices?

FR: “As it stands, we expect to go live in the next two to three years. Sin­ga­pore and Paris are in pole posi­tion, we keep reit­er­at­ing on that. So for a Euro­pean city, I would guess it’s Paris because of the Olympics in 2024 com­ing up. We have a clear com­mit­ment that we want to meet this time­line and have our oper­a­tions up and run­ning by then. If I had to make a pick today, it would be Paris.”