SkyDrive and Kansai Electric Power Company to work on developing charging facilities for eVTOL aircraft at World EXPO 2025

Sky­Drive and Kan­sai Elec­tric Pow­er Com­pa­ny have joint­ly devel­oped charg­ing facil­i­ties for eVTOL air­craft, with the aim for them to be oper­a­tional at the World EXPO 2025 in Osa­ka, Japan.

In 2022, Sky­Drive entered into a cap­i­tal and busi­ness alliance agree­ment with KEPCO and have led the joint research and devel­op­ment of advanced charg­ing facil­i­ties need­ed for the prac­ti­cal imple­men­ta­tion of eVTOL air­craft.

These facil­i­ties enable rapid charg­ing with high cur­rent and volt­age, min­imis­ing turn­around times and ensur­ing seam­less, prof­itable oper­a­tions. In addi­tion, the design allows for easy scal­a­bil­i­ty, paving the way for expand­ed glob­al appli­ca­tions.

The first charg­ing facil­i­ties will be installed at the Flight Test Facil­i­ty by year’s end, to sup­port Sky­Drive’s flight test pro­gram. Sub­se­quent­ly, anoth­er facil­i­ty will be estab­lished at the eVTOL ver­ti­port on Yumeshi­ma Island.

Sky­Drive has been select­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ‘Smart Mobil­i­ty Expo’ Project in Osa­ka, where it will fly is SD-05 air­craft. For­mal­ly estab­lished in July 2018, the com­pa­ny com­plet­ed the first crewed eVTOL flight test in Japan in 2019 and its air­craft is in the process of acquir­ing its Japan Civ­il Avi­a­tion Bureau (JCAB) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Sky­Drive plans to begin pro­duc­tion of ”SKYDRIVE” in the Spring of 2024 at the plant owned by offi­cial pro­duc­tion part­ner Suzu­ki Motor Com­pa­ny.

With the mis­sion of ‘tak­ing the lead in the once-in-a-cen­tu­ry mobil­i­ty rev­o­lu­tion’, Sky­Drive is devel­op­ing an afford­able access eVTOL air­craft for dai­ly mass-trans­porta­tion. 

KEPCO is a com­pa­ny devel­op­ing charg­ing facil­i­ties for eVTOL air­craft and study­ing sup­port for the instal­la­tion of elec­tric pow­er infra­struc­ture at ver­ti­ports, with a view to enter­ing the charg­ing infra­struc­ture busi­ness.