Skyportz launches first eVTOL air taxi hub in Australia, to transport those attending 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane

Sky­portz has revealed the first of its infra­struc­ture for eVTOL air taxis in Aus­tralia will be built at the coun­try’s Advanced Man­u­fac­tur­ing Cen­tre of Excel­lence (AAMCE) in More­ton Bay, Bris­bane with­in the next two years.

Speak­ing at this week’s AIRTAXI World Con­gress in Lon­don today, Sky­portz CEO Clem New­ton-Brown said the com­pa­ny has been accu­lumat­ing sites since 2018 and it now has more than 400 prop­er­ty part­ners ready to build out a Sky­portz net­work. This site in Bris­bane will be the first in a planned net­work to ser­vice those attend­ing the 2032 Olympic Games.

Dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion, he echoed the strong gov­ern­ment sup­port in help­ing to make elec­tric avi­a­tion a real­i­ty, with the Vic­to­ri­an Gov­ern­ment and Invest Vic­to­ria pitch­ing the city of Mel­bourne to Uber as one of the com­pa­ny’s pilot cities for urban air mobil­i­ty.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the states of New South Wales and Queens­land are already invest­ing in R&D, with the nation­al gov­ern­ment review­ing all trans­port assets and how advanced air mobil­i­ty can fit into cur­rent trans­port net­works.

New­ton-Brown said: “There is strong polit­i­cal sup­port to devel­op a new era in clean, green elec­tric avi­a­tion in Aus­tralia, how­ev­er we are wait­ing on Fed­er­al stan­dards and new State reg­u­la­tions to be devel­oped before we can pro­ceed to build­ing a net­work.

“For this rea­son we are focus­ing ini­tial­ly on exist­ing avi­a­tion infra­struc­ture and places where it is pos­si­ble to get a per­mit for a heli­pad which can tran­si­tion into a future Sky­portz. The AACME site was already propos­ing a heli­pad so this part­ner­ship has enabled us to bring for­ward our plans.”

Sky­portz is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly work­ing with Aus­tralian Fed­er­al and State gov­ern­ments to help devel­op the stan­dards, reg­u­la­tions and zones which will enable the Sky­portz “mini air­ports” in new loca­tions in and around cities and region­al cen­tres

At the moment, there are more than 300 eVTOL air taxi start ups around the world, with over $8 bil­lion invest­ed in the air­craft from the likes of EHang, Lil­i­um, Joby and Archer list­ing on the New York Stock Exchange.

But New­ton-Brown was quick to high­light the infra­struc­ture piece of the AAM ecosys­tem can­not be over­lookd. He said: “With­out a Sky­portz land­ing site net­work these air­craft are not going to be able to realise their full poten­tial. Our net­works around the world will be avail­able for all air taxi entrants but our first part­ner is the very excit­ing Elec­tra Aero air­craft from USA.

The AAMCE will estab­lish a world first, mas­ter-planned facil­i­ty just north of Brisbane’s CBD, focused on the ful­ly inte­grat­ed com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty (IP) devel­oped in Aus­tralia, and man­u­fac­tured in the coun­try for glob­al export.

It will estab­lish this bold and high­ly desir­able ecosys­tem that will deliv­er sig­nif­i­cant val­ue and scale to the entire Aus­tralian man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor via col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ner­ships with:

• The Uni­ver­si­ty of Sun­shine Coast (USC)
• Advanced Man­u­fac­tur­ing Growth Cen­tre (AMGC)
• Advance Robot­ics for Man­u­fac­tur­ing Hub (ARM Hub)
• Indige­nous Defence and Infra­struc­ture Con­sor­tium (iDiC)
• NextDC

The part­ners will invest more than $175 mil­lion (AUD) over the next three years to estab­lish an ecosys­tem unique in its advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion capa­bil­i­ty.

Open­ing late in 2023 with more than 15 part­ner organ­i­sa­tions, AAMCE will deploy world-class advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nolo­gies and an Aus­tralian first ecosys­tem that sup­ports the six-key pil­lars of the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­men­t’s 10-year Mod­ern Man­u­fac­tur­ing Ini­tia­tive (MMI) road map and estab­lish­es vital sov­er­eign capa­bil­i­ties in Aus­tralia for the future.

Ty Her­mans, Direc­tor of AAMCE, said: “We are par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ed to be design­ing the first Aus­tralian Sky­portz here in Bris­bane as part of the AAMCE. To us it makes per­fect sense that the most advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing cen­tre in Aus­tralia should include the most advanced trans­port sys­tem pos­si­ble in its design. Bris­bane is busi­ly prepar­ing for the Olympic Games in 2032 which will pro­vide a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for the city to embrace a new form of trans­porta­tion and show­case it to the world.

“This will put Aus­tralia on the map and we are very proud to be a part­ner of Sky­portz in estab­lish­ing this capa­bil­i­ty. We expect that by 2032 we should have a well estab­lished elec­tric air taxi ser­vice in Bris­bane if we get the sup­port of all lev­els of Gov­ern­ment”.