Volocopter: Dark Horse of the eVTOL Race to Early Commercial Success?

Present­ly, the eVTOL indus­try res­onates like a horse race. The ques­tion on everyone’s lips: Which com­pa­nies will be in the lead­ing pack to cross the ful­ly cer­ti­fied fin­ish­ing post?

An obvi­ous thor­ough-bred leader is EHang who con­fi­dent­ly states, it is to gain full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the CAAC lat­er this year. Yet this is, ini­tial­ly, for Chi­na only. Out­side of its own coun­try the com­pa­ny faces poten­tial polit­i­cal forces, espe­cial­ly in the U.S, where Chi­na is not deemed the favoured bauble on the Xmas tree.

Joby may be the next to gain full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, per­haps, two years after EHang, where there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to bag a tre­ble from the U.S FAA, the UKs CAA and Europe’s EASA. Agreed, the FAA kicked itself in the foot and then tripped over its own shoelaces back in May, by mod­i­fy­ing, “The reg­u­la­to­ry approach to enabling pow­ered-lift oper­a­tions includ­ing the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of pow­ered-lift and the pilots who oper­ate them…” Since, this deci­sion has caused both ill-feel­ing and con­tro­ver­sy with­in the indus­try.

On the oth­er hand, EASA has shown sta­bil­i­ty, calm­ness and most recent­ly, lead­er­ship, offer­ing Euro­pean eVTOL com­pa­nies a more cohe­sive and smoother path to full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

And when you add the CAAs recent deci­sion “to put in place the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards also used by the Euro­pean Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency, known as Spe­cial Con­di­tions (SC)-VTOL, as the basis for UK cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for new eVTOL air­craft” help­ing British com­pa­nies like Ver­ti­cal Aero­space; leav­ing aside EASA’s mam­moth 295 page pro­pos­al pub­lished a few weeks ago intro­duc­ing a reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for the oper­a­tion of air taxis in cities, EASA has become the reg­u­la­tor of choice.

EASA pub­lish­es world’s first rules for oper­a­tion of air taxis in cities

This places U.S com­pa­nies like Joby, Archer, Wisk, Beta Tech­nolo­gies and oth­ers in an awk­ward posi­tion. While Joby and Archer, for exam­ple, are full of blus­ter con­cern­ing the FAA ‘rul­ing mod­i­fi­ca­tion’ stat­ing it won’t affect their path to com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in 2024 — a PR exer­cise to help ease any fears from their investors — there is now uncer­tain­ty. And why Joby announced last week its desire to work along­side the CAA for its air­craft design to be cer­ti­fied for use in the UK, lead­ing CEO JoeBen Bevirt to say, “By work­ing hand-in-hand on cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, the UK and the US are set­ting the stage for both coun­tries to be ear­ly adopters of this impor­tant new tech­nol­o­gy” in the hope, this may smooth out any forsee­able dif­fi­cul­ties.

Yet, there is anoth­er eVTOL com­pa­ny qui­et­ly can­ter­ing up the inside track, primed to join the lead­ers: Volo­copter. To call the Ger­man com­pa­ny “a dark horse of the eVTOL race” is, per­haps, push­ing the realms of verisimil­i­tude (check out dictionary.com). Yet, after research­ing and writ­ing the series, ‘The Count­down Begins: Fly­ing Taxis and the Paris Olympic Games’, what becomes appar­ent… Volo­copter is poten­tial­ly in sec­ond-posi­tion, even when the tic tac man offers favourable odds for a place.

Joby in Third Posi­tion?

Stand aside Joby. It may be third for you. For, often an illu­sion is cre­at­ed where those com­pa­nies par­tic­u­lar­ly adept at PR and social media, help you believe, they are the ones to be in the winner’s enclo­sure.

Found­ed in 2011, Volo­copter has much going for it, espe­cial­ly come the Paris Olympics in two years time, when a Euro­pean-based eVTOL is being pushed to be the star of the show and why EASA will bend over back­wards to ensure full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by then. For pol­i­tics deems this. In fact, the company’s ful­ly elec­tric VoloC­i­ty with its two seats and 18 rotors, could become a major attrac­tion of the Games. Just as, a year lat­er, at the Osa­ka Expo, so will a Japan­ese-based fly­ing taxi. Although, Sky­Drive does seem an odd choice, at present.

In fact, there is so much deter­mi­na­tion to get Volo­copter over the fin­ish­ing line, some believe full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion may arrive as ear­ly as 2023, a year before Joby.

Present­ly, the Ger­man com­pa­ny is in the ascen­dan­cy. It is tak­ing a lead­ing role in the Cer­gy-Pon­toise Air­field tri­als and in recent months has expe­ri­enced a steady flow of pos­i­tive news.

This includes a long-term pub­lic exhi­bi­tion in Asia at the Aero­space Hub, ITE Col­lege Cen­tral, in Singapore’s Lion City, where the pub­lic can sign up for a free tour that includes a 3D Volo­Port mod­el and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to sit in an actu­al full-size VoloC­i­ty air­craft.

Sign Up

https://www.eventbrite.sg/e/envision-the-future-of-urban-air-mobility-volocity-exhibition-tour-tickets-382735190257

Chris­t­ian Bauer, CCO of Volo­copter, com­ment­ed, “We hope to increase pub­lic aware­ness and edu­ca­tion on this new form of mobil­i­ty and the many ways it will ben­e­fit Sin­ga­pore. This is the per­fect time to show­case our VoloC­i­ty as our lat­est local mar­ket sur­vey showed a sig­nif­i­cant uptick in the pro­por­tion of respon­dents who are excit­ed to try an air taxi ser­vice.”

Chris­t­ian Bauer

Mean­while, Volo­copter, fol­low­ing the foot­steps of EHang, is eye­ing the tourist mar­ket with Sin­ga­pore remain­ing firm­ly in its sights. With­in the Mari­na Bay area a pro­posed flight path over a 12 km route is expect­ed to be ready for launch around ear­ly to mid-2024. If all goes to plan, Volo­copter’s maid­en com­mer­cial flight will take pas­sen­gers from a take-off and land­ing area in Mari­na South to the Mari­na Reser­voir and back, going over the Mari­na Bar­rage and the Ben­jamin Shear­es Bridge at an alti­tude of between 100m and 150m.

The jour­ney, which will also take in parts of Kallang Basin near Tan­jong Rhu, may last around 15 min­utes. Bauer said the pro­posed route is in “the final approval stage” and stud­ies on the flight path have already been con­duct­ed. Bauer explained, ”While, Sin­ga­pore does not have a con­ges­tion prob­lem on the ground, you have around 20 mil­lion vis­i­tors per year who want to have excite­ment, an expe­ri­ence. We believe such a breath­tak­ing sight­see­ing excur­sion would be a bril­liant way to start off.” Anoth­er air taxi route around Sen­tosa island, again aimed at tourists, is next in the pipeline. Bauer has also men­tioned Volo­copter is in dis­cus­sion with the author­i­ties on the loca­tion of its first Volo­Port, which is where the air taxi will take off from and land.

While the 2X pre-series mod­el and VoloC­i­ty are the emblem­at­ic designs asso­ci­at­ed with Volo­copter, the Bruch­sal-based com­pa­ny has been devel­op­ing a four-seat, fixed-wing, lift-plus-cruise mod­el, to expand its offer­ing to a mar­ket beyond inner-city trips called Volo­Con­nect.

Com­pared to the two-seater VoloC­i­ty, designed for short intracity jour­neys with a range of 35km and a speed of 90 kmh, the Volo­Con­nect has an extend­ed dis­tance and able to car­ry a big­ger pay­load for longer urban and sub­ur­ban jour­neys, tar­get­ing a range of 100km (60 miles), along­side a cruis­ing speed of more than 250 km/h (155 mph). The first flight of a pro­to­type occurred in May and last­ed two min­utes and 14 sec­onds.

Bauer has stat­ed that fares for pas­sen­gers are expect­ed to start at about 40 per­cent of the cost of a heli­copter. That could drop to around the price of a pre­mi­um taxi with­in five years. “This makes it inter­est­ing for any­one who can afford a taxi to take a Volo­copter instead,” he remarked, adding that the company’s ser­vice will be “very silent com­pared to a heli­copter. You will not hear it at all.”

The com­pa­ny says, “Volocopter’s fam­i­ly of eVTOL air­craft will offer pas­sen­gers (VoloC­i­ty and Volo­Con­nect) and goods (Volo­Drone) swift, secure, and emis­sion-free con­nec­tions to their des­ti­na­tions, sup­port­ed by VoloIQ, the UAM ecosystem’s soft­ware plat­form that serves as its dig­i­tal back­bone for safe and effi­cient oper­a­tions.” 

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, for investors seek­ing poten­tial eVTOL stocks, Volo­copter has not, yet, float­ed on the Stock Mar­ket, so there is no oppor­tu­ni­ty to invest in the company’s, poten­tial­ly, very bright future.