“Japan’s Soratobu Taxi Invests in U.S PLANA eVTOL Company”

Japan-based Sora­to­bu Taxi AKA Sky­Taxi, an avi­a­tion busi­ness aim­ing to make air taxis as easy to use as ground taxis, announced this week an invest­ment in eVTOL com­pa­ny PLANA U.S, reports a press release. The invest­ment amount is undis­closed.

PLANA was South Korea based, but recent­ly upped sticks and moved its busi­ness to Cal­i­for­nia. 

Sora­to­bu pre­vi­ous­ly announced in June 2023, its plan to pur­chase up to 50 PLANA hybrid eVTOL air­craft by 2040. This recent invest­ment enables clos­er coop­er­a­tion in areas such as air­craft spec­i­fi­ca­tions, oper­a­tional design and reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance.

The U.S com­pa­ny is devel­op­ing a hybrid-elec­tric, medi­um-range eVTOL air­craft referred to as CP-01, which has attract­ed glob­al atten­tion for its long range and high oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy.

A key fea­ture is its abil­i­ty to achieve an air range of over 310 miles and car­ry up to sev­en peo­ple, includ­ing the pilot. The com­pa­ny moved to the Unit­ed States this year, con­duct­ing air­craft devel­op­ment under the ‘Made in USA’ des­ig­na­tion to facil­i­tate the attain­ment of Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. 

Sora­to­bu had pre­vi­ous­ly main­tained a close col­lab­o­ra­tive rela­tion­ship with PLANA’s Kore­an Corps, but decid­ed on this invest­ment to fur­ther sup­port the company’s vision of trans­fer­ring all major busi­ness and devel­op­ment activ­i­ties to Amer­i­ca.

Sora­to­bu Taxi’s oper­a­tional con­cept in Japan

Taku­to Hojo, CEO of Sora­to­bu Taxi, remarked, ”When con­sid­er­ing our goals for trans­port­ing tourists and inbound vis­i­tors as well as use in busi­ness set­tings, an air­craft that can fly 310 miles and car­ry more than four pas­sen­gers is high­ly attrac­tive.”

He con­tin­ued, “By intro­duc­ing this eVTOL, we aim to begin the social imple­men­ta­tion of advanced air mobil­i­ty start­ing from Osa­ka and expand­ing across Japan. Our vision is not to offer exclu­sive lux­u­ry for the wealthy, but rather to make air mobil­i­ty acces­si­ble to every­one, just like tak­ing an ordi­nary taxi.”

Braden Kim, Founder and CEO of PLANA, com­ment­ed, “The invest­ment is more than just fundrais­ing, it rep­re­sents an oppor­tu­ni­ty to joint­ly expand the mar­ket in the Asia region as well.” 

Mov­ing for­ward Sora­to­bu, under its vision of “bring­ing air trav­el to every­day life,” will strength­en its tech­ni­cal and busi­ness col­lab­o­ra­tion with PLANA and accel­er­ate efforts toward social imple­men­ta­tion in fields such as local gov­ern­ment ser­vices, tourism and dis­as­ter relief. 

The two com­pa­nies will joint­ly move for­ward with the goal of achiev­ing the ear­ly prac­ti­cal use of medi­um-range eVTOLs in Japan and estab­lish­ing a safe aer­i­al mobil­i­ty net­work.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://skytaxi.co.jp/skytaxi-english-soratobu-taxi-co-ltd

https://plana.aero/

(Top graph­ic image: PLANA CP-01 eVTOL Air­craft)

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