Japan: Sky Link to Produce Six-Seater eVTOL

Sky Link Tech­nolo­gies (SLT), a com­pa­ny based in Kobe, Japan, has emerged as anoth­er Japan­ese start-up to devel­op an eVTOL, in this case a six-seater air­craft, reports akihabaranews.com.

With the Osa­ka Expo 2025 less than two years away, where the Japan­ese Gov­ern­ment is deter­mined to see eVTOLs fly­ing the pub­lic to and from the event, the empha­sis to encour­age the Advanced Aer­i­al Mobil­i­ty (AAM) indus­try in Japan is all-con­sum­ing. Nev­er has there been a bet­ter time for relat­ed start-ups to form and seek invest­ment.

SLT’s ambi­tious con­cept is to con­struct a tilt-wing lift and cruise air­craft which will have a flight range of around 1,400 kilo­me­tres. While the pre­cise nature of its planned propul­sion sys­tem has not been clar­i­fied, the com­pa­ny has men­tioned on its web­site a “micro gas tur­bine rotor.”

The site shows just how ear­ly SLT is in its devel­op­ment. The present craft has a long way to go before reach­ing the fan­ci­ful graph­ic image por­trayed, so there is no chance of it being ready to play a role in the Osa­ka Expo. Even so, to aim for a six-seater is a pos­i­tive step for­ward.

The com­pa­ny site states, “We pri­ori­tise envi­ron­men­tal con­sid­er­a­tions by enabling the use of sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fuel (SAF) and plan to swift­ly tran­si­tion to ful­ly elec­tric oper­a­tions once bat­tery per­for­mance has improved suf­fi­cient­ly.” Accord­ing to the pub­lished time­line, the SLT air­craft will not be ready for the mar­ket until the 2030s.

The project’s roots go back to 2016 and the for­ma­tion of a vol­un­teer group called Per­son­al Plane Kai­hat­su Project (PPKP) which released a few ear­ly con­cept images. A busi­ness license was obtained in 2019 and seri­ous devel­op­ment began.

On the back of the grow­ing Osa­ka Expo media hype, SLT is begin­ning to receive sig­nif­i­cant atten­tion from the local media in the Kan­sai region. A fea­ture sto­ry broad­cast this week on Osa­ka tele­vi­sion pro­filed SLT’s tests of its 1:6 scale mod­el, focus­ing on the chal­lenge of achiev­ing flight sta­bil­i­ty dur­ing take­off and land­ing (see pics above).

Mean­while, Sky­drive, the lead­ing Japan­ese eVTOL com­pa­ny, is to play a promi­nent role dur­ing the Expo and through this suc­cess will open the door for many oth­er Japan-based start-ups like SLT.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.skylink-tech.co.jp/en

(News Source: www.akihabaranews.com)

(Images: SLT)