SkyDrive Partners with Tokio Marine & Nichido and Nippon Koei for eVTOL Research in Japan

Sky­Drive Inc. has signed a part­ner­ship agree­ment with Tokio Marine & Nichi­do Fire Insur­ance and Nip­pon Koei to con­duct prepara­to­ry research for the launch of eVTOL ser­vices in Japan.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion brings togeth­er SkyDrive’s eVTOL devel­op­ment exper­tise, Tokio Marine & Nichido’s risk man­age­ment and insur­ance capa­bil­i­ties, and Nip­pon Koei’s infra­struc­ture plan­ning and engi­neer­ing knowl­edge. The three com­pa­nies will focus on lay­ing the ground­work for safe and sus­tain­able com­mer­cial eVTOL oper­a­tions.

The part­ner­ship builds on ear­li­er coop­er­a­tion between Sky­Drive and Tokio Marine & Nichi­do, which began in August 2020 when the insur­er pro­vid­ed cov­er­age for SkyDrive’s first crewed eVTOL flight. The com­pa­nies, along with Nip­pon Koei, have pre­vi­ous­ly con­duct­ed joint stud­ies on route fea­si­bil­i­ty in the Osa­ka Bay area in July 2022.

Key research areas include:

• Selec­tion of tar­get areas and use cas­es for eVTOL oper­a­tions, focus­ing on address­ing local trans­porta­tion needs and tourism demands.
• Ver­ti­port fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies, includ­ing place­ment, main­te­nance, oper­a­tion meth­ods, and com­pli­ance with build­ing codes, fire reg­u­la­tions, and licens­ing require­ments.
• Devel­op­ment of sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­els, includ­ing rev­enue strate­gies and engage­ment with local gov­ern­ments.
• Risk man­age­ment and insur­ance frame­works for demon­stra­tion tri­als and com­mer­cial oper­a­tions, includ­ing safe­ty man­age­ment sys­tems.

The part­ner­ship aims to inte­grate the com­pa­nies’ capa­bil­i­ties to sup­port the intro­duc­tion of eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy into Japan­ese soci­ety through reli­able and prof­itable oper­a­tions. Sky­Drive and its part­ners will con­tin­ue joint research and assess­ments to sup­port the broad­er adop­tion of eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy in Japan.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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