SINGAPORE REVISITED: Eve Air Mobility’s Johann Bordais on company’s presence in APAC and exciting flight testing plans

Fresh off the back of a suc­cess­ful Sin­ga­pore Air­show, Eve Air Mobil­i­ty con­tin­ues to make head­ways in the Asia-Pacif­ic region. The com­pa­ny dis­played its cab­in pro­to­type for the first time at the event, which got a lot of atten­tion from del­e­gates in atten­dance, and also announced more key part­ner­ships with the likes of Yugo and Sky­scape.

eVTOL Insights was giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sit down with Eve’s new­ly appoint­ed CEO Johann Bor­dais to talk about these announce­ments in more detail. He also revealed what we can expect from the com­pa­ny this year, as it con­tin­ues along its com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion roadmap. Exec­u­tive Edi­tor Jason Pritchard asks the ques­tions.

Thanks for talk­ing to us, Johann. Can you please tell us more about the sig­nif­i­cance of these part­ner­ships for Eve in this region?

JB: The pres­ence of Eve here is super impor­tant. We’ve been a com­pa­ny for three years and accom­plished so much in the region. We’ve got the biggest back­log of air­craft, of which 400 of these orders are right here in APAC, and have accom­plished so much in the region.

We’re going to keep adding to that num­ber — not only cus­tomers for the eVTOL air­craft but the com­plete ser­vices such as Urban ATM. This is what we’ve been look­ing at.

For the APAC region, we’re talk­ing about an area that has 60 per cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion. If we talk about mobil­i­ty, it’s hap­pen­ing here. We’ve got the cab­in mock­up and a strong pres­ence at the air­show, which I think shows how com­mit­ted we are to this area.”

There’s been a lot of encour­age­ment from cities and gov­ern­ments in this region to make Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty hap­pen. How has that helped what Eve is try­ing to achieve?

JB: This whole thing [Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty] is new to every­one. It’s not just about adding a new area for air­craft, it’s much more than that so we need the engage­ment of every­one. If only one stake­hold­er is at the table, then it’s not going to work. 

The com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment, polit­i­cal cham­pi­ons, oper­a­tors, pow­er com­pa­nies. We need to have all of them work­ing at the city lev­el. You know the gov­ern­ment has pro­grammes at the nation­al lev­el. We talk about Japan being very keen for this to hap­pen, the same in Brazil and the Unit­ed States as well as coun­tries in Europe with EASA.

But there’s not real­ly the same lev­el of matu­ri­ty and readi­ness. We talk about the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of a prod­uct, but then you also have to go and pre­pare the inter­im ser­vice because you might have the vehi­cle cer­ti­fied and deliv­ered to the cus­tomer but then you’re going to need to oper­ate it. And that takes time. 

If you want to build a ver­ti­port, that takes about 12 months to build, but you also need to plan 12 months ahead to get per­mis­sion. Some­times it’s even 24 months. It’s now 2024 and we [Eve] are going to deliv­er our prod­uct in 2026. You’ve got to start all this plan­ning now.”

Talk­ing of 2024, many sug­gest it’s going to be a year of key indus­try devel­op­ments. What are your cur­rent thoughts on the mar­ket?

JB: As men­tioned, Eve is a three-year-old com­pa­ny so we start­ed a lit­tle bit after the oth­er com­pa­nies, but that doesn’t mean we’re late. We have a process. We’re backed up by Embraer which has got the great­est DNA and is the third biggest air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er in the world. It knows how to cer­ti­fy an air­plane.

If you look at Eve, we’ve got a strong team but actu­al­ly, if you look at the whole project with Embraer resources, engi­neer­ing and the oth­er areas, it’s actu­al­ly a team of 1,000 peo­ple so we know what we’re doing. We’ve got stages and are putting the build­ing blocks in place.

We’re cur­rent­ly work­ing on the appli­ca­tion in Brazil with ANAC (Agên­cia Nacional de Avi­ação Civ­il), which has got the bilat­er­al agree­ment with the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion in the USA. So we’ll also get their approvals too.

When it comes to EASA, we have been plant­i­ng the flags because some of our back­log orders are from cus­tomers in Europe. But I think it will be in the sec­ond stage, after we’ve secured approval with the FAA.”

Eve’s mock­up cab­in has got a lot of atten­tion in Sin­ga­pore. What has the pub­lic reac­tion been and how impor­tant is it to show rather than tell them what this new form of mobil­i­ty looks like?

JB: It’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence. We have the VR head­set so you can sit in the cab­in, put the gog­gles on and expe­ri­ence a sev­en-minute flight from the air­port to down­town Sin­ga­pore. This is super impor­tant. 

If you look at our mis­sion, it’s reimag­in­ing the human con­nec­tion between safe, sus­tain­able, acces­si­ble and alter­na­tive forms of mobil­i­ty. The most pre­cious thing we all have on our hands is time, so that’s what we want to give back. We’re not switch­ing cars or using heli­copters, we’ve got to keep all those trans­porta­tion mod­els avail­able, but we want to give an alter­na­tive.

Eve and the oth­er play­ers are cer­ti­fy­ing this vehi­cle through the author­i­ties. It will be fly­ing with the high­est safe­ty lev­els in avi­a­tion. The accep­tance lev­el will come nat­u­ral­ly and our strat­e­gy is to go into a few cities from 2026. We know it’s going to hap­pen but we want to prove the con­cept with a few cus­tomers, make it reli­able and then nat­u­ral­ly we’ll repli­cate in oth­er regions.

Can you expect any more announce­ments relat­ing to Eve’s time­line ahead of its 2026 launch?

JB: We’re stick­ing to the plan. We need to deliv­er for our cus­tomers, stake­hold­ers and the mar­ket as well as our­selves. 

We have a com­mit­ment to get the pro­to­type going. We start­ed last year and it has a 16-metre wingspan made of car­bon, which came out of one of our sup­pli­ers. It went down to our test facil­i­ty and we are putting the junc­tion as sched­uled between the wings and fuse­lage.

We’re on track and want to get the proof of con­cept ready for the first semes­ter and then ground test­ing. By the end of the year, we’d like to be fly­ing it. It won’t have a cab­in and will be remote­ly pilot­ed. 

In the mean­time, dur­ing the sec­ond semes­ter we will start to build the first con­form­ing pro­to­type ahead of test­ing that in 2025. We aim to have five con­form­ing pro­to­types alto­geth­er for the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme. 

So it’s about stick­ing to the plan. Get­ting things done and start­ing to reserve the first slot on the pro­duc­tion line at an Embraer fac­to­ry in Taubaté, which is a brown­field site but will be a 100-per cent Eve facil­i­ty in the future where we could pro­duce up to 500 vehi­cles a year. 

It’s been quite the jour­ney at Eve, and it’s going to get even more excit­ing. I’m thrilled with how things are going. It’s not a mat­ter of know­ing if it’s going to hap­pen. It will hap­pen. Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty is here in the present.