Volocopter Tapped for Tokyo Bay Project

(Aki­habara News Tokyo) Ger­man-based Volo­copter has been tapped to become the Tokyo Met­ro­pol­i­tan Government’s first eVTOL part­ner in its ambi­tious Tokyo Bay Envi­ron­ment Social Gov­er­nance (eSG) Project.

The Tokyo Bay eSG Project envi­sions the cre­ation of a sus­tain­able city that fus­es nature and con­ve­nience along the cap­i­tal city’s water­front area, attempt­ing to utilise cut­ting-edge and futur­is­tic tech­nolo­gies.

Volo­copter, which is devel­op­ing the VoloC­i­ty mul­ti­copter, has been includ­ed among the first group of pri­vate part­ners in the project, accord­ing to an announce­ment last week from the met­ro­pol­i­tan gov­ern­ment. A senior spokes­woman for Volocopter’s oper­a­tions in Japan clar­i­fied that the project is still at an ini­tial stage.

Volocopter’s cur­rent respon­si­bil­i­ty is to begin com­pil­ing a fea­si­bil­i­ty study on urban air mobil­i­ty and drone flights with­in Tokyo. While the project is not yet ful­ly con­firmed beyond next March, it is expect­ed to cul­mi­nate around March 2025 with the first eVTOL test flights in Tokyo.

The plan is to make use of the elec­tric heavy-lift Volo­Drone vehi­cle, which in Octo­ber 2021 con­duct­ed its first pub­lic flight, with a demon­stra­tion at ITS Con­gress in Ham­burg.

Volocopter’s Volo­Drone com­pletes suc­cess­ful first pub­lic flight at ITS Con­gress in Ham­burg

KDDI Smart­Drone has also been select­ed by the met­ro­pol­i­tan gov­ern­ment to explore pos­si­ble sea-air drone projects in Tokyo Bay.

Volo­copter was also a recent recip­i­ent of a finan­cial grant from the Osa­ka Pre­fec­tur­al Gov­ern­ment to hold an exhi­bi­tion aimed at increas­ing pub­lic accep­tance of the eVTOL indus­try.

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

One of the Ger­man firm’s clos­est col­lab­o­ra­tors in the coun­try is Japan Air­lines (JAL), one of the two largest air trav­el com­pa­nies in Japan.