SkyDrive presents Osaka Expo 2025 Achievements at Osaka Roundtable, with Future Vision for 100 eVTOL aircraft by 2035

Sky­Drive has shared two sig­nif­i­cant updates from last week, which show­case a clear time­line for the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of eVTOL air­craft in the Japan­ese mar­ket, to begin as ear­ly as next year.

Last Fri­day, March 27th, the coun­try’s Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture, Trans­port and Tourism (MLIT) offi­cial­ly revised its roadmap with the fol­low­ing details:

• 2027–2028: Launch of com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in select regions
• Ear­ly 2030s: Intro­duc­tion of pilot­less (autonomous) pas­sen­ger trans­port and advanced traf­fic man­age­ment (AAM cor­ri­dors)
• 2040s: Full inte­gra­tion of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty into every­day urban life

And on Thurs­day, March 26th, Osa­ka Pre­fec­ture host­ed the gen­er­al meet­ing of the ‘FY2025 Osa­ka Round­table for the Social Imple­men­ta­tion of the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Rev­o­lu­tion’.

Gov­er­nor Hiro­fu­mi Yoshimu­ra of Osa­ka Pre­fec­ture issued a dec­la­ra­tion to the effect that the OSAKAKO Ver­ti­port will be devel­oped into a full-scale oper­a­tional hub in the bay area, and that the pre­fec­ture will strong­ly pro­mote pub­lic-pri­vate col­lab­o­ra­tion and the res­o­lu­tion of issues to estab­lish Osa­ka as a world-lead­ing ‘Fly­ing Car Advanced City’.

Sky­Drive has been a mem­ber of the round­table since its incep­tion in 2020 and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the meet­ing to present the com­pa­ny’s recent achieve­ments and future out­look.

Pre­sen­ta­tion High­lights

• Expo 2025 Osa­ka, Kan­sai Demo Flight Results: Sky­Drive report­ed on the suc­cess­ful out­comes of its demo flights con­duct­ed over approx­i­mate­ly one and a half months dur­ing the Expo
• Progress Toward Social Imple­men­ta­tion: The com­pa­ny shared oper­a­tional insights gained from the OSAKAKO Ver­ti­port and dis­cussed aware­ness-rais­ing ini­tia­tives car­ried out in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Osa­ka Metro.
• Tran­si­tion to the “Imple­men­ta­tion Phase”: Sky­Drive high­light­ed the cur­rent shift from the exper­i­men­tal phase to actu­al imple­men­ta­tion, aim­ing for full-scale com­mer­cial oper­a­tion by 2028

Con­tribut­ing to the Future Vision

Dur­ing the meet­ing, the Kan­sai Eco­nom­ic Fed­er­a­tion (Kankeiren) pre­sent­ed its future vision: “Aim­ing to be the ‘First Penguin(Pioneer)’ of Fly­ing Cars — Real­iz­ing ‘Greater Kan­sai’ through Social Imple­men­ta­tion and Region­al Expan­sion.”

This vision out­lines a roadmap for the future:

• 2030: Sus­tained com­mer­cial oper­a­tions between two fixed points.
• 2035: Approx­i­mate­ly 100 air­craft in oper­a­tion with­in an 80km radius, cen­tered on the Osa­ka Bay area.

A state­ment from Sky­Drive said it is ‘ded­i­cat­ed to turn­ing this vision into real­i­ty’, adding: “We will car­ry for­ward the knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence gained at the Expo as a “Lega­cy” and focus all our efforts on its real­iza­tion.

“Mov­ing for­ward, we will con­tin­ue to col­lab­o­rate close­ly with the nation­al gov­ern­ment, Osa­ka Pre­fec­ture, Osa­ka City, and var­i­ous part­ner com­pa­nies. Our focus will be on accel­er­at­ing prac­ti­cal dis­cus­sions for social imple­men­ta­tion, includ­ing the devel­op­ment of ver­ti­ports, the real­iza­tion of the ‘Osa­ka Dia­mond Route’ project, and the tech­ni­cal advance­ment required for air­craft type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

Mate­ri­als for the FY2025 Osa­ka Round­table for the Social Imple­men­ta­tion of the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Rev­o­lu­tion Gen­er­al Meet­ing ( in Japan­ese) can be read by click­ing here.