Japan: Volocopter Impresses On-Lookers with First Osaka and Hyogo Flights

Volo­copter, the Ger­man-based eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­er, suc­cess­ful­ly con­duct­ed a mul­ti-day flight test cam­paign (from Decem­ber 7th to 13th) with a crewed 2X eVTOL Air­craft in the Japan­ese cities of Osa­ka and Ama­gasa­ki, reports a press release. 

This week-long test­ing cam­paign sig­ni­fies a com­ple­tion of the first steps of local flight tri­als to accli­mate the crew, com­mu­ni­ca­tions tools and flight test pro­ce­dures in prepa­ra­tion for the 2025 Osa­ka EXPO. There are just 500 days left to its open­ing.   

The release states, “The pur­pose of these flights was two-fold: to test air­craft oper­a­tions under con­di­tions sim­i­lar to those expect­ed dur­ing the EXPO and to accel­er­ate the pub­lic aware­ness of elec­tric ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing (eVTOL) air­craft in Japan.”

It con­tin­ues, “Local guests, includ­ing the Osa­ka gov­er­nor, Osa­ka City may­or, pre­fec­to­r­i­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives, city offi­cials, part­ners, and media, wit­nessed the final flight test day event, co-host­ed by Sum­it­o­mo Cor­po­ra­tion, Volocopter’s strate­gic part­ner and investor in Japan. 

“In addi­tion, over 200 local pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school stu­dents joined as an “out of the class­room” learn­ing event, con­duct­ing a Q&A ses­sion with Volo­copter’s MD, Chris­t­ian Bauer, Chief Test Pilot Paul Stone, the Osa­ka Gov­er­nor Hiro­fu­mi Yoshimu­ra and the Osa­ka City May­or Hideyu­ki Yokoya­ma, around the inno­v­a­tive eVTOL air­craft tech­nol­o­gy.”  

The flight tests were con­duct­ed at the Osa­ka Heli­port in prox­im­i­ty to the planned 2025 EXPO pavil­ion loca­tion in Osa­ka Bay. Choos­ing this loca­tion gives insight and data into how Volo­copter could shape eVTOL oper­a­tions when the exhi­bi­tion begins.  

Hiro­fu­mi Yoshimu­ra, Gov­er­nor of Osa­ka Pre­fec­ture, com­ment­ed, “After wit­ness­ing Volocopter’s test flight up close along­side hun­dreds of excit­ed stu­dents, the air­craft did not dis­ap­point. I have great expec­ta­tions for eVTOLs, and with the help of Hyo­go and oth­er neigh­bour­ing pre­fec­tures, we will push for­ward to make the EXPO a suc­cess to sup­port the future of the indus­try beyond 2025. ”

Chris­t­ian Bauer, MD of Volo­copter, added, “See­ing the children’s faces light up when the Volo­copter took to the air was the absolute high­light of the day. As a nov­el tech­nol­o­gy, pub­lic aware­ness of eVTOLs and the cre­ation of the UAM ecosys­tem are where we need to focus for Japan.”

Hiro­fu­mi Yoshimu­ra

The release con­tin­ues, “Ear­li­er in the week, the crewed Volo­copter 2X also per­formed an air­craft behav­iour­al flight with the New Ener­gy and Indus­tri­al Tech­nol­o­gy Devel­op­ment Organ­i­sa­tion (NEDO), Japan’s nation­al research and devel­op­ment cen­tre. For this mul­ti-day flight test cam­paign, Volo­copter was award­ed sub­si­dies from Osa­ka Pre­fec­ture, Osa­ka City, Hyo­go Pre­fec­ture, and NEDO, with fur­ther sup­port from its spon­sors such as Sek­isui Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny, Mit­sui Sum­it­o­mo Insur­ance Com­pa­ny, Kin­tet­su Group Hold­ings, and Schenker-Seino Com­pa­ny.”

Since late last year, Volo­copter has been award­ed mul­ti­ple grants in Japan to con­duct class­room stud­ies on eVTOLs for school chil­dren in Osa­ka as well as route and com­mu­ni­ca­tion fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies in Tokyo. 

In March, the com­pa­ny show­cased a VoloC­i­ty eVTOL in a shop­ping mall in Osa­ka city cen­tre, where it attract­ed many thou­sands of peo­ple in just a few days. 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.volocopter.com/en

(Top image: Volo­copter 2X Fly­ing at Osa­ka Heli­port)