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Marubeni Corporation becomes first customer in Asia to make pre-delivery payment for Vertical’s VX4 aircraft

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has secured a pre-deliv­ery pay­ment for the reser­va­tion of its VX4 eVTOL air­craft from its exist­ing cus­tomer, the lead­ing Japan­ese trad­ing and invest­ment con­glom­er­ate, Marubeni Cor­po­ra­tion.

Fol­low­ing the joint work­ing group part­ner­ship with Ver­ti­cal, Marubeni has reserved air­craft deliv­ery slots for 25 out of its up to 200 con­di­tion­al pre-orders and becomes Vertical’s first cus­tomer in Asia to make a pre-deliv­ery pay­ment.

Ver­ti­cal and Marubeni pre­vi­ous­ly announced a part­ner­ship in Sep­tem­ber 2021 for con­di­tion­al pre-order options of up to 200 air­craft, and joint eval­u­a­tion of the require­ments for eVTOL air­craft oper­a­tions in Japan, as well as com­mer­cial con­sid­er­a­tions such as route and net­work plan­ning and infra­struc­ture require­ments.

Stephen Fitz­patrick, Ver­ti­cal’s founder and CEO, said: “We are delight­ed to have reached the next mile­stone in our part­ner­ship with Marubeni. Japan is a won­der­ful coun­try which is embrac­ing the promise of eVTOL, as it will con­nect cities and regions like nev­er before. We look for­ward to our joint efforts to build the ecosys­tem for zero-emis­sions trav­el in Japan.”

Marubeni’s com­mit­ment fur­ther rein­forces Japan’s poten­tial as a key launch mar­ket for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty. The com­pa­ny has con­duct­ed proof-of-con­cept demon­stra­tion tri­als in prepa­ra­tion for the Osa­ka World Expo 2025, using exist­ing heli­copters at future expect­ed AAM ser­vice prices for flights between Osa­ka heli­port to Wakaya­ma.

Through­out the tri­als, Marubeni also began address­ing pub­lic aware­ness, accep­tance, and require­ments for future eVTOL ser­vices in the pre­fec­ture.

Satoshi Takechi, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, Avi­a­tion, Space & Defense Dept. said: “We are proud to have tak­en anoth­er major step with Ver­ti­cal Aero­space to intro­duce VX4 in Japan. I am con­fi­dent that our con­tin­ued joint efforts with Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, such as eval­u­at­ing the require­ments for eVTOL oper­a­tions and engag­ing the poten­tial part­ners under the Joint Work­ing Group, togeth­er with this new agree­ment, will accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of the AAM mar­ket in Japan.

“Marubeni will fur­ther enhance activ­i­ties to mate­ri­alise our busi­ness, which aims to make air trav­el more acces­si­ble and con­ve­nient, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly con­tribut­ing to cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures, includ­ing low-car­bon and decar­bon­i­sa­tion ini­tia­tives.”

Ver­ti­cal’s VX4 pro­to­type was issued with its Per­mit to Fly from the UK’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty in Sep­tem­ber 2022 and since then, it has suc­cess­ful­ly under­tak­en pilot­ed flight tests. The flight test pro­gramme will con­tin­ue over the com­ing months, reach­ing high­er alti­tudes and speeds as well as demon­strat­ing the tran­si­tion from ver­ti­cal to hor­i­zon­tal flight.

The VX4 is pro­ject­ed to be capa­ble of trans­port­ing a pilot and up to four pas­sen­gers, trav­el­ing dis­tances of 100 miles, and achiev­ing top speeds of more than 200 miles per hour.

Ver­ti­cal cur­rent­ly has a pre-order book for more than 1,400 air­craft from glob­al cus­tomers cre­at­ing mul­ti­ple poten­tial near term and action­able routes to mar­ket. Cus­tomers include Amer­i­can Air­lines, Vir­gin Atlantic, Avolon, Bris­tow, Marubeni, Ibero­jet and FLYINGGROUP, as well as Japan Air­lines (JAL), Gol, Air Green­land, Gozen Hold­ing and AirA­sia, through Avolon’s VX4 place­ments.

Vertical’s ordi­nary shares and war­rants com­menced trad­ing on the NYSE in Decem­ber 2021 under the tick­ers “EVTL” and “EVTLW,” respec­tive­ly.

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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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