SkyDrive agrees to Build eVTOL with Suzuki, increases seat capacity to three

Sky­Drive announced yes­ter­day at Paris Air Show 2023 that it signed an agree­ment with Suzu­ki Motor Cor­po­ra­tion to man­u­fac­ture its eVTOL air­craft, and will estab­lish a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary that will utilise a pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty owned by the Suzu­ki Group in Shizuo­ka Pre­fec­ture, Japan.

It aims to start build­ing the air­craft by spring of 2024 with Suzu­ki coop­er­at­ing to secure human resources and make oth­er prepa­ra­tions for a three-seat, elec­tric-pow­ered light­weight air­craft.

Suzu­ki Motor Cor­po­ra­tion pres­i­dent Toshi­hi­ro Suzu­ki com­ment­ed: “We coop­er­ate with Sky­Drive to cre­ate valu­able prod­ucts that con­tribute to the real­i­sa­tion of a world where peo­ple use the sky for their dai­ly trans­porta­tion.”

Sky­Drive CEO Tomo­hi­ro Fukuza­wa added: “At Suzu­ki, all man­u­fac­tur­ing activ­i­ties are based on a con­cept, ‘Small­er, Few­er, Lighter, Short­er, and Neater’ and Sky­Drive is devel­op­ing light­weight air mobil­i­ty.

“Suzu­ki and Sky­Drive have been col­lab­o­rat­ing since March 2022 and we will utilise the Suzu­ki pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in our pur­suit to con­sis­tent­ly man­u­fac­ture safe and high-qual­i­ty air­craft for the world.”

Sky­Drive also announced new spec­i­fi­ca­tions for its air­craft, ver­i­fy­ing the design change from a seat­ing capac­i­ty of two to three pas­sen­gers. The announce­ment fol­lows the com­ple­tion of the patent appli­ca­tion for a unique rotor dome design.

The rotor dome design opti­mis­es the pow­er con­sump­tion of each motor to enhance pow­er effi­cien­cy. Sky­Drive aims to obtain air­wor­thi­ness cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in 2025 to fly the eVTOL “SKYDRIVE” at the Expo 2025 Osa­ka, Japan, fol­lowed by type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in 2026 to start mass pro­duc­tion and deliv­ery.

Sky­Drive also aims to obtain type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion in order to start oper­a­tions in the US.

Last month, Sky­Drive announced that its SD-05 eVTOL was award­ed the iF Design Award in the Pro­fes­sion­al Con­cept cat­e­go­ry, hav­ing been select­ed from almost 11,000 entries from 56 coun­tries in 2023.

Sky­Drive SD-05 wins iF Design Award