SK Telecom and Joby Aviation to collaborate on K‑UAM Grand Challenge

SK Tele­com has signed a col­lab­o­ra­tion agree­ment with Joby Avi­a­tion to par­tic­i­pate in the K‑UAM Grand Chal­lenge at a sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny that took place at SKT’s Seoul head­quar­ters last week.

The two com­pa­nies will com­bine their exper­tise and resources to under­take flight test­ing that is designed to sup­port the devel­op­ment of the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty sec­tor in Korea.

K‑UAM Grand Chal­lenge is a large-scale demon­stra­tion pro­gramme launched by the Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture and Trans­port (MOLIT) to test the safe­ty and suit­abil­i­ty of UAM in an urban envi­ron­ment and to sup­port the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of UAM by 2025.

SKT and Joby are part of the K‑UAM Dream Team Con­sor­tium, which announced its inten­tion to par­tic­i­pate in the K‑UAM Grand Chal­lenge in Feb­ru­ary 2023, sign­ing a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing with MOLIT. The con­sor­tium includes a wide range of world-class part­ners, includ­ing Korea Air­ports Cor­po­ra­tion, Han­wha Sys­tems and T Map Mobil­i­ty.

The first phase of the Grand Chal­lenge pro­gram will take place at a nation­al flight site in Gohe­ung, Jeol­lanam-do. SKT and Joby Avi­a­tion plan to use Joby’s air­craft to con­duct flight tests to check the inte­grat­ed oper­a­tion of the UAM sys­tem, and mea­sure the aircraft’s acoustic foot­print. Joby will dis­patch a flight test team to Korea to sup­port the test­ing.

Joby Avi­a­tion con­tin­ues to lead the way on cer­ti­fy­ing eVTOL air­craft with the FAA. It became the first eVTOL com­pa­ny to com­plete both the first and sec­ond stages of the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process and have also com­plet­ed the sub­mis­sion of stage three cer­ti­fi­ca­tion plans to the FAA.

Joby cel­e­brat­ed the launch of pro­duc­tion at its pilot pro­duc­tion line in Mari­na, CA, in June and announced this week that it has select­ed Day­ton, Ohio as the loca­tion for its first scaled man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty.

“This agree­ment marks a crit­i­cal step on the road to mak­ing aer­i­al rideshar­ing a dai­ly real­i­ty in Korea. We are grate­ful for the con­tin­ued lead­er­ship of the Kore­an Gov­ern­ment as they seek to lead the way on the adop­tion of elec­tric flight,” said Eric Alli­son, Head of Prod­uct at Joby Avi­a­tion.

SKT chief devel­op­ment offi­cer Ha Min-yong added: “We will work close­ly with Joby Avi­a­tion to bring the world’s most sophis­ti­cat­ed air­craft to Korea and ver­i­fy our capa­bil­i­ties for sta­ble and safe UAM oper­a­tions. We will open an era of ‘AI mobil­i­ty’ by com­bin­ing UAM and AI.”

In June, Joby Avi­a­tion announced that SK Tele­com made an equi­ty invest­ment of $100 mil­lion in Joby, as part of an expand­ed part­ner­ship between the two com­pa­nies.