Dufour Aerospace set to bring its eVTOL aircraft to Japan after teaming up with AirMobility in new agreement

Dufour Aero­space has signed a dis­tri­b­u­tion agree­ment with Japan’s Air­Mo­bil­i­ty to enter the coun­try’s mar­ket and pro­mote its eVTOL air­craft as a form of sus­tain­able trav­el.

Dufour’s eVTOL plat­form is based on proven tilt-wing tech­nol­o­gy, which gives the air­craft the abil­i­ty to not only con­duct a ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing, but also the abil­i­ty to cruise more effi­cient­ly.

The com­pa­ny has built a large-scale pro­to­type and com­plet­ed hun­dreds of test flights, which include full tran­si­tion from hov­er to cruise and back. The pro­to­type was designed as a research plat­form, with a mod­u­lar ener­gy bay that allows both pure-elec­tric and hybrid-elec­tric equip­ment to be installed.

Thomas Pfam­mat­ter, co-Founder & CEO of Dufour Aero­space, said: “We are delight­ed to be work­ing with Air­Mo­bil­i­ty Inc., one of the lead­ing eVTOL relat­ed plat­form ser­vices provider in Japan. We know that Japan has high expec­ta­tions and ambi­tious plans when it comes to eVTOL, and with our ver­sa­tile and effi­cient con­cept and our devel­op­ment phi­los­o­phy, we can ful­fil these expec­ta­tions.

“Our prod­ucts are designed and engi­neered to meet the demands of cus­tomers in many dif­fer­ent com­mer­cial sec­tors such as Emer­gency Med­ical Ser­vices, Trans­port, but also Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty. In addi­tion, our team has a lot of expe­ri­ence when it comes to oper­at­ing air­craft. We are excit­ed to start a win-win rela­tion­ship as a part­ner of Air­Mo­bil­i­ty Inc.”

The part­ner­ship comes comes after Japan’s Min­istry of Econ­o­my, Trade and Indus­try and the Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture, Trans­port and Tourism cre­at­ed the ‘Pub­lic-Pri­vate Coun­cil for the Air Mobil­i­ty Rev­o­lu­tion’, of which Air­Mo­bil­i­ty is a mem­ber.

Japan has set a goal to launch eVTOL oper­a­tions as ear­ly as 2023, and Air­Mo­bil­i­ty aims to build a sales and ser­vices plat­form to pro­vide ser­vices that enable eVTOL air­craft to nav­i­gate eas­i­ly and safe­ly. This includes the in-house devel­op­ment of ASCP (Air Mobil­i­ty Ser­vice Col­lab­o­ra­tion Plat­form), which is its core sys­tem. A trans­porta­tion ser­vice for spec­ta­tors using eVTOL is planned at the 2025 Osa­ka Expo.

Mr. Hisas­hi Asai, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Air­Mo­bil­i­ty Inc. said: “We are pleased to have signed a dis­tri­b­u­tion agree­ment for an eVTOL suit­able for oper­a­tion in Japan. When choos­ing Dufour Aero­space, we care­ful­ly con­sid­ered sev­er­al fac­tors such as the matu­ri­ty of the man­age­ment team, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion path­way, tech­nol­o­gy readi­ness, cor­po­rate phi­los­o­phy, and prod­uct fea­si­bil­i­ty.

“As a result, Dufour Aerospace’s eVTOL is extreme­ly attrac­tive com­pared to oth­er com­pa­nies. We look for­ward to report­ing on flight demon­stra­tions and con­firm­ing deliv­ery into oper­a­tions.”

Ear­li­er this year, Dufour Aero­space secured addi­tion­al fund­ing from session.vc and exist­ing investors, which will help to take its hybrid eVTOL pas­sen­ger air­craft into pre-pro­duc­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. It also brought in Sascha Hard­eg­ger as its new Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer.