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Japan’s Hyogo Prefecture subsidises AirX flying car project

Aki­habara News (Tokyo) — AirX, in part­ner­ship with Mizushi­ma Aero & Space Indus­try Clus­ter Study Group (MASC) and CTI Engi­neer­ing, has been select­ed by Hyo­go Pre­fec­ture and Kobe city to receive a sub­sidy for fly­ing cars and eVTOLs.

This ini­tia­tive, named the Demon­stra­tion Project Util­is­ing Fly­ing Cars in the Osa­ka Bay Area: Cre­at­ing Aer­i­al Tourism,” has the goal of posi­tion­ing Hyo­go and Kobe as trail­blaz­ers in “aer­i­al tourism” through the util­i­sa­tion of eVTOLs.

Its cen­tral focus lay in rig­or­ous tech­ni­cal ver­i­fi­ca­tion, encom­pass­ing crit­i­cal aspects such as safe­ty of oper­a­tions, envi­ron­men­tal impact assess­ments, and a thor­ough val­i­da­tion of tourism-relat­ed ser­vices.

The size of the pub­lic sub­sidy to be grant­ed was not revealed. The region is mov­ing quick­ly toward the social inte­gra­tion of eVTOLs, with the 2025 World Expo in Osa­ka serv­ing as a promi­nent mile­stone.

AirX aims to play a piv­otal role in this endeav­our, spe­cial­is­ing in the pro­cure­ment and sales of next-gen­er­a­tion air­craft, includ­ing eVTOLs. Their offer­ings extend to heli­copter sight­see­ing and char­ter ser­vices, com­ple­ment­ed by the devel­op­ment of sophis­ti­cat­ed sys­tems for reser­va­tion man­age­ment and flight oper­a­tions.

This col­lab­o­ra­tion aims to rev­o­lu­tionise trans­porta­tion and tourism while address­ing mod­ern urban chal­lenges, under­scor­ing a com­mit­ment to pio­neer­ing inno­va­tions in air mobil­i­ty.

In Jan­u­ary 2022, EHang announced a pre-order of 50 units of its EH216 autonomous aer­i­al vehi­cle (AAV) from AirX, which is the biggest order the com­pa­ny has received in Japan.

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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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