7A Drones to Purchase 10 SD-05 eVTOL Aircraft from SkyDrive, Both Companies to Work on Proposed Emergency Medical Route Near Taiwan

Sky­Drive has reached a gen­er­al under­stand­ing with Tai­wanese firm 7A Drones for the pur­chase of 10 of its SD-05 eVTOL air­craft.

Both com­pa­nies signed a busi­ness part­ner­ship agree­ment in May 2025 to work toward the devel­op­ment and pub­lic accep­tance of eVTOLs in the region.

The sched­ules include the deliv­ery of one air­craft in 2028 and four air­craft in 2029.

Tomo­hi­ro Fukuza­wa, CEO of Sky­Drive, said: “We are delight­ed that 7A Drones, our busi­ness part­ner in Tai­wan, has signed this Let­ter of Intent for the pur­chase of SKYDRIVE air­craft. As our first Let­ter of Intent in the Asian mar­ket, this agree­ment marks a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in the expan­sion of SkyDrive’s over­seas busi­ness­es.

“We are par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased to announce a first con­crete expan­sion into the med­ical sec­tor with joint pro­pos­als for emer­gency med­ical routes in the Penghu Islands. By lever­ag­ing the fast response and sta­ble oper­a­tion of eVTOL air­craft to address the trans­port chal­lenges faced by island com­mu­ni­ties, we can help build a more robust med­ical infra­struc­ture. We are proud to con­tribute towards this wor­thy goal.”

Sky­Drive and 7A Drones have also been explor­ing how eVTOL air­craft could pro­vide for the emer­gency med­ical trans­porta­tion of patients and med­ical staff in Taiwan’s Penghu Islands.

This new agree­ment includes devel­op­ing a pro­posed emer­gency med­ical evac­u­a­tion route con­nect­ing Magong City on Penghu’s main island with Hujing Island, a more remote island with­in the Penghu Islands.

The Penghu Islands, which con­sist of 90 islands of var­i­ous sizes, face chron­ic chal­lenges includ­ing restrict­ed inter-island trans­porta­tion dur­ing rough win­ter weath­er when fer­ry ser­vices are fre­quent­ly can­celled.

This issue is par­tic­u­lar­ly seri­ous for Hujing Island, which has only one basic pub­lic clin­ic serv­ing a pop­u­la­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 860 peo­ple. When crit­i­cal­ly ill patients require urgent care, they need quick access to advanced med­ical facil­i­ties locat­ed off the island. One com­mon des­ti­na­tion hos­pi­tal is med­ical facil­i­ty in Magong City.

Hsin-Sheng Hsu, CEO of 7A Drones, said: “This LOI rep­re­sents an impor­tant start­ing point for 7A Drones to explore the poten­tial for coop­er­a­tion with Sky­Drive and oth­er Japan­ese com­pa­nies in the field of next-gen­er­a­tion air mobil­i­ty.

“In par­tic­u­lar, the con­cept of uti­liz­ing advanced air mobil­i­ty solu­tions for emer­gency med­ical trans­porta­tion in the Penghu Islands has drawn our strong inter­est, as it may serve as one pos­si­ble approach to address­ing the chal­lenges faced by remote island com­mu­ni­ties, includ­ing trans­porta­tion con­straints and equi­table access to med­ical ser­vices.

“Through this project, we hope to fur­ther strength­en sub­stan­tive pri­vate-sec­tor coop­er­a­tion and dia­logue between Tai­wan and Japan, and to con­tribute to the long-term devel­op­ment of cross-bor­der col­lab­o­ra­tion in advanced mobil­i­ty.”

7A Drones was estab­lished in 2018 and is part of the I‑Mei Group, which devel­ops and man­u­fac­tures UAVs for sec­tors such as agri­cul­ture, logis­tics, dis­as­ter response and med­ical trans­port.

The com­pa­ny leads Taiwan’s drone spray­ing mar­ket and active­ly sup­ports smart mobil­i­ty both local­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly. It is the only com­pa­ny in the coun­try to receive CAA type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for mul­ti­copter UAVs weigh­ing more than 25 kg, with its drones adopt­ed for offi­cial train­ing.

In logis­tics, 7A Drones obtained spe­cial cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for UAVs up to 150kg through a nation­al project tar­get­ing imple­men­ta­tion by 2025. With mul­ti­ple patent­ed tech­nolo­gies, the com­pa­ny is work­ing to build a com­pre­hen­sive air mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem by advanc­ing legal frame­works, oper­a­tional sys­tems, and infra­struc­ture.