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Aviation Capital Group to finance Volocopter’s fleet of eVTOL aircraft for up to $1 billion, helping to fulfil customer demand for UAM services

Volo­copter and Avi­a­tion Cap­i­tal Group LLC (ACG) have entered into an agree­ment in prin­ci­ple to devel­op financ­ing solu­tions that will assist with the sale of Volocopter’s fam­i­ly of eVTOL air­craft for up to USD $1 bil­lion.

The agree­ment between both com­pa­nies will per­mit the scal­ing of the com­mer­cial busi­ness short­ly after cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, to help ful­fil cus­tomer demand. All Volo­copter air­craft – VoloC­i­ty, Volo­Con­nect, and Volo­Drone – are expect­ed to be cov­ered by this agree­ment.

Deliv­er­ies are expect­ed to com­mence once the air­craft has been cer­ti­fied for com­mer­cial use by the respec­tive civ­il avi­a­tion author­i­ties. These include the Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) and the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA).

Flo­ri­an Reuter, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Volo­copter, said: “This agree­ment will allow our busi­ness to hit the ground run­ning after air­craft cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. It sig­ni­fies ACG’s and our investor Tokyo Century’s trust in Volocopter’s lead­er­ship in the UAM mar­ket. We are grate­ful for this part­ner­ship as this financ­ing rep­re­sents anoth­er cor­ner­stone of the essen­tial ecosys­tem for scal­ing UAM.” 

For Volo­copter cus­tomers, this agree­ment offers an option and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to lease the air­craft through financ­ing schemes. As a glob­al avi­a­tion air­craft asset man­age­ment com­pa­ny, ACG will pro­vide flex­i­bil­i­ty and secu­ri­ty in cus­tomer trans­ac­tions dur­ing the lease.

Tom Bak­er, CEO and Pres­i­dent of ACG, said: “This trans­ac­tion high­lights ACG’s ongo­ing com­mit­ment to reduc­ing the envi­ron­men­tal impact of the avi­a­tion indus­try and to work­ing towards a clean­er and more sus­tain­able future. The trans­ac­tion builds on the exist­ing part­ner­ship between Volo­copter and ACG’s par­ent com­pa­ny, Tokyo Cen­tu­ry, an ear­ly equi­ty investor in Volo­copter.”

The UAM total address­able mar­ket is expect­ed to be worth EUR 241 bil­lion by 2035. [1] The mar­ket in which Volo­copter oper­ates is unique­ly tar­get­ed at fly­ing above and around the world’s dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed megac­i­ties.

Volo­copter’s fam­i­ly of eVTOL air­craft fly com­plete­ly emis­sion-free and pro­vide trans­porta­tion as a ser­vice both for pas­sen­gers (VoloC­i­ty and Volo­Con­nect) and for goods (Volo­Drone). All of its air­craft are designed with low com­plex­i­ty to meet the needs of this mar­ket and cus­tomer, as well as the high­est lev­el of stan­dards in avi­a­tion safe­ty and low-noise emis­sions that make them ide­al for inner-city jour­neys. 

The Ger­man start­up aims to cre­ate urban air mobil­i­ty ecosys­tems in cities world­wide with sus­tain­able air­craft, meet­ing the high­est safe­ty stan­dards by achiev­ing civ­il avi­a­tion cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, and forg­ing strong part­ner­ships with gov­ern­ments and busi­ness­es.

It is the first and only eVTOL devel­op­er to hold Design Organ­i­sa­tion Approval (DOA) and Pro­duc­tion Organ­i­sa­tion Approval (POA), two strate­gic reg­u­la­tor mile­stones nec­es­sary to launch com­mer­cial ser­vices.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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