SkyDrive Secures Additional Funding to Accelerate eVTOL Development and Certification

Build­ing on pre­vi­ous suc­cess­ful fund­ing rounds, Sky­Drive, a lead­ing eVTOL devel­op­er, has announced anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment in its Series C fund­ing. This lat­est round includes con­tri­bu­tions from promi­nent investors such as Inven­tum Ven­tures, Osa­ka Metro Co., Ltd., Ener­gy & Envi­ron­ment Invest­ment, Inc., and Mizuho Bank, Ltd., under­scor­ing the grow­ing con­fi­dence in SkyDrive’s vision for the future of urban air mobil­i­ty. The funds will be instru­men­tal in pro­pelling Sky­Drive’s mis­sion to rev­o­lu­tion­ize dai­ly trans­porta­tion through eVTOLs.

Back­ground and objec­tives of the fund­ing
Sky­Drive was estab­lished in July 2018 with the mis­sion of “tak­ing the lead in the once-in-a-cen­tu­ry mobil­i­ty rev­o­lu­tion” and its vision is to cre­ate a future where every­one uses eVTOLs as their dai­ly trans­porta­tion in Japan and across the world.

Type cer­tifi­cate is one of the essen­tial approvals for the eVTOL social imple­men­ta­tion. Japan Civ­il Avi­a­tion Bureau (JCAB) had accept­ed an appli­ca­tion for type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of SkyDrive’s eVTOL “SKYDRIVE” (*3)  in 2021 and in 2022 JCAB and Sky­Drive agreed on the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion basis. Sky­Drive is cur­rent­ly in the process of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion activ­i­ties in par­al­lel with devel­op­ment, with the aim of agree­ing on the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion plan. After the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion plan is agreed, Sky­Drive will con­duct ground tests and flight tests to ver­i­fy that they meet the required stan­dards and per­for­mance cri­te­ria.

With this invest­ment, Sky­Drive plans to upgrade both facil­i­ties and orga­ni­za­tion for ground and flight test­ing to accel­er­ate its devel­op­ment and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion activ­i­ties. Addi­tion­al­ly, the com­pa­ny will expand and strength­en its qual­i­ty assur­ance and oth­er key depart­ments to sup­port the tran­si­tion to mass pro­duc­tion, ensur­ing that its air­craft meet the stan­dards of qual­i­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty.

Sky­Drive has received a total of 263 pre-orders for its eVTOL from Japan, the Unit­ed States, South Korea and Viet­nam. Sky­Drive will also devel­op a dig­i­tal plat­form that will enable it to con­sis­tent­ly man­age air­craft data through­out the entire lifecycle—from design and man­u­fac­tur­ing to post-deliv­ery. This plat­form will allow the com­pa­ny to mon­i­tor the con­di­tion of the air­craft even after the air­craft has been deliv­ered to the cus­tomer.

Com­ments from Tomo­hi­ro Fukuza­wa, CEO of Sky­Drive Inc.
“Since the Series C fund­ing in Sep­tem­ber 2022, we have been able to make great progress in the devel­op­ment of our eVTOL air­craft with many top-class engi­neers from around the world join­ing our team. With the coop­er­a­tion of Suzu­ki Motor Cor­po­ra­tion, a share­hold­er and strong pro­duc­tion part­ner, we announced the start of pro­duc­tion of ‘SKYDRIVE’ at Suzu­ki Group’s man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in March 2024. In terms of busi­ness devel­op­ment, we are also work­ing with Suzu­ki to devel­op the mar­ket in India and have con­clud­ed a strate­gic part­ner­ship with the gov­ern­ment of Gujarat. In the Unit­ed States, we estab­lished Sky­Drive Amer­i­ca, Inc. in Sep­tem­ber 2023, and are cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing prac­ti­cal use cas­es orig­i­nat­ing from region­al air­ports in South Car­oli­na, Geor­gia, and oth­er states. We are grate­ful to our investors and busi­ness part­ners for their pos­i­tive eval­u­a­tion of our progress and their strong sup­port. We will keep doing our best to advance our eVTOL and busi­ness devel­op­ment to meet everyone’s expec­ta­tions.”

About Sky­Drive Inc.
Sky­Drive was for­mal­ly estab­lished in July 2018 after test­ing fly­ing car con­cepts and pro­to­types from 2014 with the mis­sion of “tak­ing the lead in the once-in-a-cen­tu­ry mobil­i­ty rev­o­lu­tion.” Its vision is to cre­ate a future where every­one has access to eVTOLs as their dai­ly trans­porta­tion in Japan and across the world. The com­pa­ny suc­ceed­ed in the first crewed eVTOL flight test in Japan in 2019 and its eVTOL “SKYDRIVE” is in the process of acquir­ing its Japan Civ­il Avi­a­tion Bureau and Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion cer­ti­fi­ca­tions. Sky­Drive has been select­ed as a com­pa­ny to par­tic­i­pate in the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty  project at Expo 2025 Osa­ka, Kan­sai, Japan. Sky­Drive began pro­duc­tion of “SKYDRIVE” in March 2024 at the plant owned by offi­cial pro­duc­tion part­ner Suzu­ki Motor Cor­po­ra­tion. Sky­Drive is head­quar­tered in Toy­ota, Aichi Pre­fec­ture. Tomo­hi­ro Fukuza­wa is the CEO of the com­pa­ny.

For more infor­ma­tion, please vis­it: https://en.skydrive2020.com/

Editor’s Note:
(*1) “eVTOL” is an abbre­vi­a­tion for elec­tric ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing. eVTOL air­craft are char­ac­ter­ized by elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, a ful­ly autonomous autopi­lot, and ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing. It is also called Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) or Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM).

(*2) Relat­ed press release: https://en.skydrive2020.com/archives/7416

(*3) “SKYDRIVE” is a prod­uct name of Sky­Drive Mod­el SD-05.

Parting Thoughts

Sky­Drive’s unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to inno­va­tion and safe­ty is evi­dent in their metic­u­lous approach to eVTOL devel­op­ment and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The com­pa­ny’s strate­gic part­ner­ships, cou­pled with this lat­est fund­ing round, posi­tion Sky­Drive as a fron­trun­ner in the elec­tric avi­a­tion indus­try. As Sky­Drive con­tin­ues to push bound­aries, we antic­i­pate sig­nif­i­cant advance­ments in the eVTOL space, bring­ing us clos­er to a future where aer­i­al trans­porta­tion is an inte­gral part of our dai­ly lives. Keep an eye on Sky­Drive as they rede­fine the way we trav­el!