Urban-Air Port secures investment from Supernal in landmark partnership to support development of 200 vertiport sites

British start-up Urban-Air Port Ltd (UAP) has secured invest­ment from Super­nal, pre­vi­ous­ly the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Divi­sion of Hyundai Motor Group — the first time a major eVTOL com­pa­ny has invest­ed in a ground infra­struc­ture devel­op­er.

The part­ner­ship will deliv­er on the com­pa­nies’ shared vision of inte­grat­ing advanced air mobil­i­ty into exist­ing tran­sit net­works and cre­at­ing a seam­less pas­sen­ger jour­ney. Adam Slepi­an, Glob­al Head of Part­ner­ships & Busi­ness Devel­op­ment at Super­nal, has now joined Urban Air-Port’s board of direc­tors, effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly, while Matthew Sat­tler, Head of Infra­struc­ture and Ecosys­tems Part­ner­ships at Super­nal, joins UAP’s board of advi­sors.

The fund­ing will help sup­port UAP’s plans to devel­op 200 ver­ti­port sites across the world in the next five years. The com­pa­ny describes them as ultra-com­pact, rapid­ly deploy­able, oper­a­tions hubs for manned and unmanned vehi­cles pro­vid­ing air­craft com­mand and con­trol, charging/refuelling, and car­go and pas­sen­ger load­ing. Its world-first Air-One project in Coven­try City Cen­tre will be oper­a­tional from April 2022.

Ricky Sand­hu, Founder and Exec­u­tive Chair­man of Urban-Air Port, said: “Cars need roads. Trains need rails. Planes need air­ports. eVTOLs need Urban-Air Ports. Despite the unpar­al­leled poten­tial of eVTOL air­craft to rev­o­lu­tionise mobil­i­ty, the impor­tance of the ground infra­struc­ture that enables them is too often over­looked.

“With Supernal’s invest­ment and exper­tise and con­nec­tion to Hyundai Motor Group, we can super­charge the roll­out of sus­tain­able, inter­modal and scal­able ground infra­struc­ture that will unleash the future of advanced air mobil­i­ty glob­al­ly. We are assem­bling a group of aligned finan­cial and cor­po­rate ven­ture cap­i­tal investors that will extend our lead­er­ship. I look for­ward to wel­com­ing fur­ther investors into UAP.”

UAP’s ver­ti­port sites will pro­vide essen­tial infra­struc­ture to help enable mass adop­tion of eVTOL air­craft – such as car­go drones and air taxis – as pub­lic accep­tance grows and will trans­form the way goods and peo­ple are trans­port­ed around urban areas.

The world’s first ful­ly oper­a­tional hub for eVTOLs, Air-One, will open for pub­lic vis­i­ta­tion in Coven­try and the demon­stra­tion will show how AAM can help unlock the poten­tial of sus­tain­able mobil­i­ty. It will also show­case how the indus­try will work to help reduce con­ges­tion, cut air pol­lu­tion and decar­bonise trans­port.

The urban air mobil­i­ty mar­ket is fore­cast­ed to grow by 9 per cent annu­al­ly, reach­ing US$12.7 bil­lion by 2027^[i] and up to US$1 tril­lion in the next 20 years^[ii]. How­ev­er, lack of ground infra­struc­ture remains one of the biggest bar­ri­ers to the growth of the AAM indus­try.

For exam­ple, only 3 per cent of indus­try invest­ment in 2021 (US$150 mil­lion) was in the phys­i­cal ground infra­struc­ture^[iii], despite 33 times that fig­ure (US$5 bil­lion) announced for the devel­op­ment of eVTOL vehi­cles in the same peri­od^[iv].

Super­nal is both con­ven­ing pub­lic and pri­vate stake­hold­ers to respon­si­bly shape the AAM indus­try and devel­op­ing its own eVTOL and plans to launch its first com­mer­cial flight in 2028. The company’s invest­ment in the start-up will help sup­port the devel­op­ment of UAP’s new ‘ver­ti­port’ mod­els includ­ing the City­Box deliv­ery drone hub, and expan­sion into new mar­kets.

Jai­won Shin, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Super­nal and Pres­i­dent, Hyundai Motor Group, said: “At Super­nal, we are on a mis­sion to trans­form how peo­ple and soci­ety move, con­nect, and live; there­fore, it is essen­tial we not only devel­op elec­tric air vehi­cles, but also help shape the broad­er advanced air mobil­i­ty mar­ket from the ground up.

“We are pleased to con­tin­ue work­ing with Urban-Air Port and sup­port its efforts to cre­ate ground infra­struc­ture that works seam­less­ly with eVTOLs and inte­grates the advanced air mobil­i­ty indus­try with exist­ing modes of trans­porta­tion.”

Urban-Air Port is backed by major inter­na­tion­al part­ners. As well as Super­nal, its team of inno­va­tors, aero­nau­ti­cal engi­neers and aero­space experts have worked at com­pa­nies includ­ing Air­bus, Fos­ter + Part­ners, Arup, JP Mor­gan, Knight Frank, British Avi­a­tion Group, Qine­tiq and Uber, and in the UK Defence Sec­tor.