South Korea consortium set up to establish eVTOL air taxi services in Incheon, which includes new pilot training programme

A con­sor­tium fea­tur­ing Mobius.Energy, MintAir, Sky­works Aero­nau­tics, Lotte Rental and Lotte Cor­po­ra­tion has been estab­lished to help launch eVTOL air­craft ser­vices in the city of Incheon, South Korea.

The com­pa­nies involved intend to estab­lish a vibrant run­way with inde­pen­dent elec­tric air mobil­i­ty pas­sen­ger and car­go move­ment capa­bil­i­ty. It also intends to devel­op a pilot train­ing pro­gramme, as well as main­te­nance and repair capa­bil­i­ties in the region to sup­port effi­cient, scal­able oper­a­tions across the penin­su­la.

This includes all the nec­es­sary cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment to sup­port flight test­ing and the com­mer­cial launch of a urban air mobil­i­ty ser­vice using Sky­works’ eGy­ro™ air­craft. It can trans­port up to four pas­sen­gers dis­tances between 30 and 100 miles, at speeds of 100 to 150mph.

John E. Michel, Sky­works Aero­nau­tics CEO, said: “This is a very excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for Sky­works and our part­ners, Lotte Rental, Lotte Cor­po­ra­tion, Mobius.Energy and MintAir, to part­ner with a lead­ing city in South Korea with a very pro­gres­sive and com­pre­hen­sive vision for estab­lish­ing a future of elec­tri­fied UAM air­craft.

“Our goal is to be the first in the world to demon­strate com­pelling UAM capa­bil­i­ties with eGy­ro flights for the max­i­mum range with full pay­load with­in the coun­try of Korea. It is ambi­tious and exhil­a­rat­ing and we have just the team to achieve this notable endeav­our.”

Mobius.energy is a start­up based in Orange Coun­try, Cal­i­for­nia but its pre­de­ces­sor InnoTM was found­ed in 2014 to co-devel­op the next gen­er­a­tion bat­tery with Tes­la. Mobius.energy has devel­oped what it says is a safe, light and ener­gy-effi­cient bat­tery mod­ule archi­tec­ture opti­mised for elec­tric types of all types.

Its stan­dard high-pow­er mod­ule is called Husky 2P45, with its high dis­charge rate pro­vides on-demand pow­er boost need­ed dur­ing take-off, hov­er­ing and land­ing. The sim­ple design enables easy main­te­nance, on-site swap­ping and cost-effec­tive re-use and recyl­c­ing.

Mobius.energy has said it plans to deliv­er its mod­ules through a sub­scrip­tion mod­el, includ­ing main­te­nance and sal­vage ser­vices. Repur­pos­ing its mod­ules for a sec­ond life in the sta­tion­ary mar­ket and pro­vid­ing end-of-life recy­cling will cre­ate a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my help­ing to decar­bonise the avi­a­tion indus­try.

“Demon­strat­ing max­i­mum range flight with full pay­load is an impor­tant mile­stone for avi­a­tion cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of elec­tric air­craft and com­mer­cial deploy­ment of UAM ser­vice. Being the first to prove the max­i­mum range flight capa­bil­i­ty will be a game chang­er” said Jong­won ‘JP’ Park, Mobius.energy’s Chief Strat­e­gy Offi­cer.

LOTTE Cor­po­ra­tion is a hold­ing com­pa­ny of LOTTE Group, based in Seoul. LOTTE Group was for­mal­ly estab­lished in 1967 and has since grown to become Korea’s fifth-biggest con­glom­er­ate, encom­pass­ing four key busi­ness areas includ­ing food and drink, retail, chem­i­cal, hotel and ser­vice with more than 90 affil­i­ates. LOTTE Group is in over 30 coun­tries around the world. 

LOTTE Rental is the described as the num­ber one vehi­cle rental sup­pli­er in South Korea. Its main goal is to become a lead­ing provider of mobil­i­ty solu­tions and full range rental ser­vices. In order to achieve this goal, LOTTE Rental plans to devel­op a plat­form that offers com­pre­hen­sive, con­ve­nient and flex­i­ble use of mobil­i­ty and rental assets. Such mis­sion can be dri­ven by util­is­ing cus­tomer data that LOTTE Group already pos­sess, which includes the data of 40 mil­lion LOTTE mem­bers and L.pay cus­tomers.

Dong-woo Lee, LOTTE Corp.’s Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer, said: “LOTTE Group’s long-term vision includes lead­er­ship in a low car­bon future includ­ing the eco-friend­ly mobil­i­ty indus­try. Under this vision, we have joined the Con­sor­tium to pre­pare for the upcom­ing era of UAM. LOTTE Group, includ­ing LOTTE Rental, will invest rel­e­vant resources and capa­bil­i­ties to suc­cess­ful­ly car­ry out this demon­stra­tion project with the Con­sor­tium, IAIAC and Incheon Met­ro­pol­i­tan City.”

Hyun-soo Kim, LOTTE RENTAL’s Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer, added: “Lotte Rental is a lead­ing com­pa­ny in Kore­a’s ground mobil­i­ty-based liv­ing plat­form ser­vice. Lotte Rental will estab­lish a mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem that leads the glob­al mar­ket through organ­ic con­nec­tion with UAM and ground mobil­i­ty ser­vices. We are excit­ed to part­ner with glob­al lead­ers on this impor­tant ini­tia­tive devel­op­ing the UAM indus­try.”

The city of Incheon has already played its part in the urban air mobil­i­ty mar­ket in Korea, with Volo­copter per­form­ing a demon­stra­tion flight with its 2X eVTOL air­craft at the city ear­li­er this month. The event coin­cid­ed with K‑UAM Con­fex 2021, which was attend­ed by the Pres­i­dent of Incheon Inter­na­tion­al Air­port Cor­po­ra­tion and May­or of Incheon Met­ro­pol­i­tan City, Nam-choon Park.

He said: “Incheon Met­ro­pol­i­tan City wel­comes the con­sor­tium to Incheon region for eGy­ro demon­stra­tion flight and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of UAM ser­vice. The city is open to UAM busi­ness and will sup­port indus­try efforts inter­est­ed in part­ner­ing with Incheon.”

While MintAir is build­ing an UAM Ser­vice in South Korea. MintAir’s approach is to facil­i­tate an ecosys­tem of part­ners to accel­er­ate the adop­tion of elec­tric flight in Korea. A for­mer glob­al engi­neer­ing part man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny, MintAir will take advan­tage of its glob­al busi­ness expe­ri­ence and net­work to accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem in Asia-Pacif­ic region

Eugene Choi, MintAir’s Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer, added: “We are excit­ed to part­ner with an inno­v­a­tive Incheon Met­ro­pol­i­tan City, where the world class Incheon Inter­na­tion­al Air­port is locat­ed; the Insti­tute for Aero­space Indus­try-Acad­e­mia Col­lab­o­ra­tion (IAIAC) who is build­ing a vibrant UAM ecosys­tem in Korea; and Lotte Cor­po­ra­tion and Lotte Rental who will bring resources and expe­ri­ence of a large glob­al cor­po­ra­tion. We are con­fi­dent that these part­ner­ships will accel­er­ate com­mer­cial deploy­ment of UAM ser­vice in Korea.”

Oth­er recent devel­op­ments in South Korea include Volo­copter’s work with Kakao Mobil­i­ty, Sky­ports and Ken­coa Aero­space’s col­lab­o­ra­tion to imple­ment car­go drone deliv­er­ies and EHang con­duct­ing test flights with its 216 AAV in three loca­tions at the end of 2020. Addi­tion­al­ly, the coun­try’s gov­ern­ment has set up a pub­lic-pri­vate con­sul­ta­tion group called UAM Team Korea to help com­mer­cialise air taxis. Mem­ber com­pa­nies include Super­nal, Han­wha Sys­tems, Kore­an Air, SK Tele­com and Doosan Mobil­i­ty Solu­tions.