Volocopter joins Osaka Roundtable as it accelerates commitment to launching urban air mobility services in Japan

Volo­copter has joined the Osa­ka Round­table, an insti­tu­tion eager to bring urban air mobil­i­ty to one of the busiest cities in Asia, as the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to accel­er­ate its com­mit­ment to launch­ing ser­vices in Japan.

As part of the engage­ment, the Ger­man eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er has also com­mit­ted to fly dur­ing the Expo 2025 Osa­ka Kan­sai. It joins oth­er com­pa­nies which are part of the round table, includ­ing Japan’s Sky­Drive, and togeth­er with its long-term part­ner and investor Japan Air­lines (JAL), Volo­copter plans to con­duct pub­lic test flights as ear­ly as 2023. 

Flo­ri­an Reuter, CEO, Volo­copter, said: “We are hon­oured to be seat­ed at the Osa­ka Round­table and take flight at an impor­tant mile­stone of the Expo 2025 Osa­ka Kan­sai. Japan’s and Osaka’s com­mit­ment to UAM com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion and its open approach allows us to be involved in pio­neer­ing them into the future of mobil­i­ty.

“As the world’s first and only eVTOL devel­op­er with suc­cess­ful pub­lic flights in sev­er­al con­ti­nents and a fam­i­ly of mul­ti-func­tion­al air­craft, we are con­fi­dent that we will become an inte­gral part of Japan’s future UAM ecosys­tem. Togeth­er with our part­ners, we aim to improve lives in dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas with our sus­tain­able UAM ser­vices.”

With nine mil­lion res­i­dents, Osa­ka Pre­fec­ture has one of the largest indus­tri­al bay areas in Asia, includ­ing sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al sea­ports and air­ports with­in its vicin­i­ty, mak­ing it an ide­al loca­tion to test in land, water, and city con­di­tions.

As host of the Expo 2025 Osa­ka Kan­sai, the city has strong ambi­tions to kick­start urban air mobil­i­ty busi­ness­es from this event onward, as a leader in an already advanced nation.

Since 2018, Japan has been proac­tive­ly shap­ing its future of air mobil­i­ty and set an ambi­tious tar­get to achieve full com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of eVTOL air taxi and heavy lift car­go drone busi­ness by 2030. Recent­ly, JAL reserved 100 Volo­copter air­craft (Volo­Drone and VoloC­i­ty) units for its future use.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Volo­copter has start­ed direct com­mu­ni­ca­tions with local gov­ern­ment offices to dis­cuss how its prod­ucts can sup­port the local ecosys­tem in dis­as­ter relief or to aid regen­er­a­tion of indus­tri­al and sub­ur­ban loca­tions through air bridges.

Oth­er com­pa­nies which have already com­mit­ted to launch ser­vices in the coun­try include Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, Dufour Aero­space and EHang. While Sky­ports and Kane­mat­su are work­ing togeth­er to devel­op com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger and car­go mis­sions.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Wing­copter and All Nip­pon Air­ways are team­ing up to help build an eVTOL drone deliv­ery net­work in the coun­try, which will trans­port vital phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and oth­er con­sumer prod­ucts via unmanned air­craft.

Besides Japan, Volo­copter has com­mit­ted to air taxi ser­vices in Sin­ga­pore with­in the next three years and announced the deliv­ery of 150 of Volo­copter prod­ucts to China’s Geely with­in the next five years.