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“Germany Plans Flying Taxi Test Routes From 2026”

In Decem­ber, Ger­man Trans­port Min­is­ter, Volk­er Wiss­ing, con­firmed his view that drones and air taxis will “rev­o­lu­tionise air mobil­i­ty”, reports electrive.com. His Min­istry pre­sent­ed a new strat­e­gy for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM), which includes test routes for air taxis from 2026.

The Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for Dig­i­tal and Trans­port (BMDV) aims to make the coun­try a lead­ing Euro­pean region for the devel­op­ment and oper­a­tion of drones and eVTOLs, after pub­lish­ing a timetable for AAM that serves as a guide­line for oper­a­tors. This will be imple­ment­ed in four phas­es lead­ing up to 2032. 

The first test routes are to be set up by 2026, fol­lowed by the des­ig­na­tion of geo­graph­i­cal­ly lim­it­ed AAM areas two years lat­er. By 2030, these regions will be expand­ed to include region­al trans­port and final­ly, nation­wide oper­a­tions are planned by 2032.

The strat­e­gy also envi­sions the estab­lish­ment of ver­ti­ports along­side a pilot qual­i­fi­ca­tion pro­gram, safe­ty aspects clar­i­fied and a legal frame­work. New route con­cepts are also planned.

Strat­e­gy Papers (In Ger­man)

bmdv.bund.de / bmdv.bund.de

The Ger­man Min­istry plans to pro­mote inno­va­tions in the AAM sec­tor to strength­en the coun­try as a cen­tre of tech­nol­o­gy. This includes sup­port for research projects and close coop­er­a­tion with indus­try and research insti­tu­tions. 

Specif­i­cal­ly, the min­istry intends to set up AAM real-world lab­o­ra­to­ries this year ded­i­cat­ed to top­ics such as the safe inte­gra­tion of eVTOL and Unmanned Aer­i­al Sys­tems into exist­ing trans­port infra­struc­tures, the cre­ation of the infra­struc­ture required for eVTOL oper­a­tions and the devel­op­ment of inte­grat­ed safe­ty sys­tems. 

(Cred­it: Volo­copter)

The BMDV also intends to award a con­tract for a research project to devel­op the key com­po­nents for the con­struc­tion of ver­ti­ports in Ger­man cities as ear­ly as March.

electrive.com writes, “The goal is to pro­mote an attrac­tive invest­ment envi­ron­ment to sup­port the devel­op­ment of AAM in Ger­many. That includes incen­tives for com­pa­nies and investors, as well as the pro­vi­sion of fund­ing. The Min­istry even intends to organ­ise an AAM investor con­fer­ence.”

Wiss­ing is con­vinced that Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty is a tech­nol­o­gy for every­one. He com­ments in the Strat­e­gy Paper, “AAM will not be an elite project for busi­ness trav­ellers, but to ben­e­fit soci­ety as a whole. Espe­cial­ly when car­go drones and eVTOLs can be used in regions that are cur­rent­ly dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble to reach using con­ven­tion­al means of trans­port.”

This Ger­man Trans­port Min­istry enthu­si­asm is a puz­zle giv­en the recent dis­in­ter­est from the country’s author­i­ties to finan­cial­ly sup­port their two top eVTOL com­pa­nies, Volo­copter and Lil­i­um. How­ev­er, it should be men­tioned that the state guar­an­tee for Lil­i­um did not fail because of Wiss­ing who had cam­paigned for it, but because of the par­lia­men­tary bud­get com­mit­tee.

News Source: https://www.electrive.com/

(Top image: Volk­er Wiss­ing — Cred­it: FDP)

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