Eve Air Mobility and Widerøe Zero to work on developing potential eVTOL aircraft routes in Scandinavia

Eve Urban Air Mobil­i­ty and Widerøe Zero have signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing which will aim to devel­op urban air mobil­i­ty solu­tions and focus on deploy­ing eVTOL oper­a­tions in Scan­di­navia.

The rela­tion­ship between the two organ­i­sa­tions began in 2017, when Widerøe signed an order for up to 15 of Embraer’s E190-E2 com­mer­i­cal jets. The largest region­al air­line in Scan­di­navia is also the launch cus­tomer of the new gen­er­a­tion E‑Jets E2 fam­i­ly, start­ing the E190-E2 oper­a­tions in April 2018 in Bergen, Nor­way.

With the cre­ation of the Air Mobil­i­ty Busi­ness Incu­ba­tor, Widerøe Zero, the com­pa­nies will use Eve’s eVTOL air­craft to devel­op a new con­cept of oper­a­tion where pas­sen­gers will expe­ri­ence the future of elec­tric trans­porta­tion and a new mod­el of sus­tain­able mobil­i­ty, con­nect­ing peo­ple liv­ing in a sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed region and chal­leng­ing geog­ra­phy.

André Stein, Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Eve, said: “In order to con­tribute to the world tar­get to elim­i­nate green­house gas emis­sion by 2050, the aero­space indus­try depends on dis­rup­tive inno­va­tion. With Urban Air Mobil­i­ty, we have a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to design a new and opti­mised mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem: infra­struc­ture, vehi­cle, oper­a­tions, and air traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tems.

“We are thrilled to work togeth­er with Widerøe Zero to devel­op UAM solu­tions in Scan­di­navia, with an entire­ly new, zero-emis­sion, expe­ri­ence to trav­ellers.”

As part of this col­lab­o­ra­tion, Widerøe Zero will con­tribute to a mar­ket readi­ness exer­cise and a vehi­cle con­cept of oper­a­tion study in Scan­di­navia, fur­ther­ing Eve’s devel­op­ment of the UAM mar­ket in the region.

Ben­e­fit­ting from a start­up mind­set and backed by Embraer’s more than 50-year his­to­ry of air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion exper­tise, Eve unveils a unique val­ue propo­si­tion by posi­tion­ing itself as an ecosys­tem part­ner by offer­ing a suite of prod­ucts and ser­vices with the high­est lev­els of safe­ty stan­dards.

Eve’s human-cen­tered, eVTOL design com­bines dis­rup­tive inno­va­tion and a sim­ple and intu­itive design. In addi­tion to the air­craft pro­gram, Eve is har­ness­ing the exper­tise of both Embraer and Ate­ch, a sub­sidiary of the Embraer Group, in pro­vid­ing glob­al­ly rec­og­nized air traf­fic man­age­ment soft­ware to cre­ate the solu­tions that will help safe­ly scale the urban air mobil­i­ty indus­try going for­ward.

Andreas Koll­bye Aks, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer at Widerøe Zero, said: “Although ini­tial­ly designed for Urban Air Mobil­i­ty, we expect these high­ly flex­i­ble vehi­cles to be inter­est­ing in a vari­ety of appli­ca­tions also in rur­al areas; from car­go to pas­sen­ger trans­porta­tion.

“Our part­ner­ship with Eve is part of our plan to accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of sus­tain­able avi­a­tion in Nor­way. We are look­ing for­ward to the expand­ed part­ner­ship, unlock­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties to improve region­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty.”

Widerøe Zero is a con­sul­tan­cy-cum-incu­ba­tor for a rev­o­lu­tion in avi­a­tion. Owned by Widerøe AS and head­quar­tered in Nor­way, it tack­les all the reg­u­la­to­ry, com­mer­cial, and financ­ing chal­lenges involved in pur­chas­ing and oper­at­ing zero-emis­sions air­craft. 

Its work is imme­di­ate­ly nec­es­sary for Nor­way, where the geog­ra­phy wel­comes short-haul flights already pos­si­ble with exist­ing zero-emis­sions tech­nol­o­gy. Oth­er coun­tries through­out Europe and beyond will ben­e­fit increas­ing­ly from Widerøe Zero’s knowl­edge as the range of com­mer­cial options afford­ed by an entire­ly new class of air­craft becomes clear.