D3 Technologies and Walle Mobility to set out roadmap for urban air mobility in Italy by designing concept of operations

D3 Tech­nolo­gies has agreed to col­lab­o­rate with Walle Mobil­i­ty in explor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for Urban Air Mobil­i­ty in Italy.

The com­pa­ny is devel­op­ing a dig­i­tal, fail-safe air man­age­ment sys­tem that enables Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty to scale. It organ­is­es air traf­fic over met­ro­pol­i­tan areas and con­nect­ing cor­ri­dors for air taxis and heavy car­go drones.

As part of this part­ner­ship, both D3 and Walle Mobil­i­ty will cre­ate a state-of-the-art recog­nised con­cept of oper­a­tions, with D3 focus­ing on the air traf­fic man­age­ment part and Walle Mobil­i­ty pro­vid­ing the air taxi ser­vice.

Achim Kostron, CCO D3 Tech­nolo­gies: “The future advanced air mobil­i­ty sys­tem will be based on inter­op­er­abil­i­ty and requires to be han­dled with high­est stan­dards of safe­ty. Walle Mobil­i­ty shares our vision of high­ly safe and auto­mat­ed Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty. We are hap­py to move for­ward togeth­er as this part­ner­ship is the first to demon­strate this kind of oper­a­tions in Italy.”

Italy is seen as a poten­tial ear­ly adopter for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty in Europe, with a high poten­tial for busi­ness, leisure and sight­see­ing flights.

Walle Mobility’s goal is to specif­i­cal­ly tar­get interur­ban routes with­in 50km and offer routes as a shut­tle trans­port ser­vice via eVTOL air­craft. Its roadmap will see the com­pa­ny mock up a ver­ti­port design lat­er this year, with pub­lic demo days start­ing from 2022–23.

The con­struc­tion of the first ver­ti­port is planned for 2024, as well as the recruit­ment and train­ing of the country’s first pilot. The launch of Italy’s first eVTOL air­craft ser­vice will then launch a year lat­er in 2025.

It says it wants to rad­i­cal­ly trans­form pas­sen­ger trans­port in high-den­si­ty areas and con­nect strate­gic points of cities or tourist areas with impor­tant traf­fic nodes such as air­ports and rail­way sta­tions.

Walle Mobility’s lat­est agree­ment with D3 Tech­nolo­gies is the third one it has announced in the eVTOL mar­ket. Ear­li­er this year, the Ital­ian start­up con­firmed it will be work­ing with Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty to devel­op the first routes as ear­ly as 2026. Jaunt’s Jour­ney eVTOL air­craft will also be used for the first pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing ser­vices. Addi­tion­al­ly, Walle is work­ing with Airio to devel­op intel­li­gent flight paths.

Kostron added: “There are two large towns (Milan and Rome), more than 800 islands, a third of the sur­face is made up by moun­tains, near­by big cities are often 100–200 kms away from each oth­er.

“There’s a huge poten­tial also for leisure and sight­see­ing flights, for exam­ple Flo­rence, Naples, Venice, and oth­ers. All embed­ded in an ecosys­tem of dis­tricts which are famil­iar with aero­space and auto­mo­tive facil­i­ties and exper­tise.”

Since being found­ed in 2018, D3 Tech­nolo­gies has also already entered sev­er­al rel­e­vant part­ner­ships itself, includ­ing Varon Vehi­cles, Man­ta Air­craft and Fly­now Avi­a­tion. In May 2021, D3 also became a mem­ber of the Cana­di­an Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Con­sor­tium for Urban Air Traf­fic Con­trol def­i­n­i­tion and imple­men­ta­tion in Cana­da.