Nippon Koei Looks to Lead Japan’s Vertiport Market

Exec­u­tives with­in Tokyo-based Nip­pon Koei are aim­ing to make their com­pa­ny Japan’s mar­ket leader in the forth­com­ing eVTOL ver­ti­port indus­try, reports akihabaranews.com.

Yasushi Inoue, Nip­pon Koei Senior Man­ag­er of the Glob­al Avi­a­tion Depart­ment, spoke with aki­habaranews for anoth­er exclu­sive for the web­site media out­let, who revealed, “We already pro­vide design and con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices for heli­pads, so we need to start as soon as pos­si­ble to design ver­ti­ports and be involved in the ear­ly stages of this new mar­ket.”

It was Inoue with a back­ground in air traf­fic con­trol, who first influ­enced the com­pa­ny to become inter­est­ed in eVTOL ver­ti­ports — an exten­sion of an exist­ing enthu­si­asm for the drone indus­try.

Nip­pon Koei first showed an inter­est a year ago after join­ing the ‘Pub­lic-Pri­vate Com­mit­tee for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty’. In March, dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion at the Committee’s eighth meet­ing, it offered an inter­est in ver­ti­ports, focus­ing on aspects such as air­field main­te­nance, air­space con­trol, pow­er sup­plies, envi­ron­men­tal assess­ment and secu­ri­ty.

And last month, Nip­pon Koei was part of the Kane­mat­su Cor­po­ra­tion-led con­sor­tium that received a finan­cial grant from the Osa­ka Pre­fec­tur­al Gov­ern­ment to estab­lish a ver­ti­port man­age­ment sys­tem. Its part­ners include Sky­ports and Chuo Fukken Con­sul­tants.

Japan: Osa­ka Allo­cates Grants for eVTOL Devel­op­ment

While Inoue has a clear vision over how he sees the company’s ver­ti­port busi­ness pro­ceed­ing, he admits the company’s top man­age­ment has not made a full com­mit­ment, although “knows this is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for Nip­pon Koei to begin a new busi­ness.”

The arti­cle states, “(Inoue) views the first step as pro­vid­ing a plan­ning and design con­sul­tan­cy ser­vice to major real estate com­pa­nies and oth­ers, sim­i­lar to what the firm already does in con­nec­tion with air­ports. He believes that major real estate com­pa­nies which are build­ing new facil­i­ties or design­ing new towns may be attract­ed to the idea of sup­ply­ing them with ver­ti­ports and turn­ing them into the hubs of future trans­porta­tion net­works.”

It goes on, “The sec­ond step, as Inoue sees it, is that Nip­pon Koei, or per­haps a com­pa­ny sub­sidiary, could be estab­lished lat­er to own and oper­ate ver­ti­ports itself.”

While some observers pre­sume the first ver­ti­ports are to be con­vert­ed heli­pads, Inoue sees this the oth­er way around. First, will come the entire­ly new ver­ti­port infra­struc­tures and only lat­er, per­haps from around 2030 when the mar­ket begins to mature, will some exist­ing heli­pads be con­vert­ed.

He explains, “The issue is how to install the bat­tery charg­ers. We have to con­sid­er fire­fight­ing and res­cue oper­a­tions. Nobody yet knows what stan­dards will be required. It may be much eas­i­er to make a new envi­ron­ment with­in new con­struc­tions.”

Yasushi Inoue

Inoue recog­nis­es there are sev­er­al tech­ni­cal and reg­u­la­to­ry chal­lenges which still need to be over­come.
First, the Japan­ese and inter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies which are build­ing the first gen­er­a­tion of eVTOLs are not yet releas­ing detailed spec­i­fi­ca­tions. This means it is impos­si­ble to know pre­cise­ly which kinds of elec­tric charg­ing equip­ment will be need­ed at the sites.

Also, Inoue points out the Japan Civ­il Avi­a­tion Bureau may hold back, by wait­ing on the FAA and EASA to first set their own stan­dards. He rue­ful­ly com­ments, “In the avi­a­tion field, Japan has always been a fol­low­er, not a leader.”
Inoue hopes, how­ev­er, that the eVTOL indus­try could become an oppor­tu­ni­ty for Japan to shake off a his­to­ry of delay and fail­ure. He con­tends, “This is a very good chance for Japan­ese com­pa­nies to cre­ate a suc­cess sto­ry in the avi­a­tion field.”

Not only does Inoue believe that Nip­pon Koei should be at the fore­front of the ver­ti­port move­ment, but “become the top ver­ti­port design com­pa­ny in Japan.”

By 2030, he would like to see Nip­pon Koei reg­u­lar­ly design­ing ver­ti­ports over­seas, espe­cial­ly for devel­op­ing nations in South­east Asia.

Nip­pon Koei, estab­lished in 1946, is a broad-based engi­neer­ing con­sul­tan­cy ser­vice for infra­struc­ture projects includ­ing for air­port design.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.n‑koei.co.jp/english/

(News Source: https://akihabaranews.com/)

(Top image: mvrdv)