Hyundai Motor to accelerate Urban Air Mobility test flights in Korea as part of new agreement

Hyundai Motor Com­pa­ny is part­ner­ing with Incheon Inter­na­tion­al Air­port Corp. (IIAC), Hyundai Engi­neer­ing & Con­struc­tion and KT Corp to accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) and work togeth­er to con­duct test flights in Korea.

A mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing was signed by four par­ties on 18th Sep­tem­ber to work toward com­mer­cial­is­ing UAM by 2028. The part­ner­ship will also sup­port build­ing a robust infra­struc­ture and busi­ness mod­el, as well as inno­v­a­tive UAM vehi­cles.

“The breadth and depth of this part­ner­ship shows what it will take to build a com­pre­hen­sive UAM ecosys­tem to serve megac­i­ties like Seoul,” said Jai­won Shin, Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent and Head of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Divi­sion at Hyundai Motor.

“Build­ing a robust infra­struc­ture and busi­ness mod­el is just as impor­tant as devel­op­ing inno­v­a­tive UAM vehi­cles. This part­ner­ship demon­strates Hyundai’s com­mit­ment to facil­i­tat­ing progress for human­i­ty by ush­er­ing in a new era of urban air mobil­i­ty that will rev­o­lu­tionise trans­porta­tion.”

Hyundai will push for­ward devel­op­ing the UAM busi­ness and secur­ing busi­ness cas­es, while IIAC will work to estab­lish the infra­struc­ture and study fea­si­bil­i­ty of util­is­ing UAM as air­port shut­tles.

Hyundai Con­struc­tion will utilise its exper­tise to build ver­ti­ports as well as the tran­sit hub that will con­nect UAM to oth­er pub­lic trans­porta­tions. KT will set up the com­mu­ni­ca­tions infra­struc­ture and make busi­ness cas­es for UAM as a mobil­i­ty ser­vice.

All four par­ties will be shar­ing nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion dur­ing the devel­op­ment as well as joint­ly work­ing on test flights.

In June 2020, the Kore­an gov­ern­ment announced the Kore­an UAM Roadmap, out­lin­ing steps need­ed to com­mer­cialise the mar­ket in the coun­try.

Hyundai Motor and its part­ners will align with the roadmap that includes the Kore­an UAM Grand Chal­lenge, the pub­lic-pri­vate joint demon­stra­tion project that pro­vides the basis for joint­ly study­ing the con­struc­tion and oper­a­tion of ver­ti­ports.

Hyundai unveiled its inno­v­a­tive vision for urban mobil­i­ty — the SA‑1 air taxi con­cept — at CES 2020 ear­li­er this year. It can car­ry up to four pas­sen­gers and fly on trips up to 60 miles (100km), at an alti­tude of between 1,000–2,000ft.

It will be pilot­ed ini­tial­ly, before even­tu­al­ly becom­ing autonomous, and will only need between five and sev­en min­utes to recharge – accord­ing to the auto­mo­tive giant.

The com­pa­ny also announced a part­ner­ship with Uber at CES 2020, with Hyundai pro­duc­ing and deploy­ing the air vehi­cles, and Uber pro­vid­ing air­space sup­port ser­vices, con­nec­tions to ground trans­porta­tion, and cus­tomer inter­faces through an aer­i­al ride share net­work.