SkyDrive Accepts Pre-orders from Private Individuals

Sky­Drive today announced that it is now accept­ing pre-orders for its eVTOL air­craft SD-05 for per­son­al use, with Kotaro Chi­ba, a licensed pilot and the first own­er of a Hon­da­Jet in Japan, becom­ing the first pri­vate cus­tomer for the Sky­Drive SD-05.

Sky­Drive has devel­oped its busi­ness-to-busi­ness pre-order sales since it unveiled the design of the SD-05 in Sep­tem­ber 2022. Today, Sky­Drive also reports that the Viet­namese devel­op­er Pacif­ic Group agreed to pre-order up to 100 SD-05 air­craft, with ten con­firmed pre-orders and 90 con­di­tion­al pre-order options2

Hav­ing received numer­ous inquiries from indi­vid­u­als express­ing inter­est in acquir­ing the SD-05, Sky­Drive agreed to open pre-order sales to the gen­er­al pub­lic. Chi­ba, co-founder and man­ag­ing part­ner of Drone Fund, became the first share­hold­er of Sky­Drive in Novem­ber 2018.

Drone Fund is a ven­ture cap­i­tal firm that focus­es on drone tech­nol­o­gy and the advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) indus­try. Chi­ba is an ‘angel investor’ with over 60 start-ups as well as 50 ven­ture cap­i­tal funds expe­ri­ence.

Chi­ba said: “In 2018, I was cap­ti­vat­ed by Sky­Drive’s vision of the future and its inno­v­a­tive air­craft and upon see­ing the company’s first pro­to­type, I enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly made the deci­sion to invest in Sky­Drive.

“Dri­ven by my pas­sion for the first fly­ing car of the future, I obtained my pri­vate pilot licence. Since then, Sky­Drive has con­duct­ed suc­cess­ful crewed test flights and applied for type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

Tomo­hi­ro Fukuza­wa, founder & CEO of Sky­Drive, said: “Since we unveiled the design of our SD-05 in Sep­tem­ber 2022, we have received numer­ous inquiries, not only from com­pa­nies but also from pri­vate indi­vid­u­als.

“As we aim to cre­ate a future where every­one has access to eVTOLs as their dai­ly trans­porta­tion, we under­stand that it is impor­tant that we have an option for indi­vid­u­als to own their air­craft.

“We received inquiries from Mr Chi­ba more than once and we are tru­ly grate­ful that he con­firmed the pre-order as the first indi­vid­ual own­er right after we decid­ed to receive pre-orders from indi­vid­u­als. We will devel­op ful­ly auto­mat­ed air­craft in the future and fur­ther pro­mote the real­i­sa­tion of a soci­ety where every­one utilis­es the sky for dai­ly trans­porta­tion.”

Ear­li­er this week, Sky­Drive secured addi­tion­al fund­ing in its Series C round, and its cumu­la­tive fund­ing now exceeds 15 bil­lion yen as of 6 April 2023.

Sky­Drive secures addi­tion­al Series C round fund­ing now exceed­ing 15 bil­lion yen