Skyports to provide its industry expertise in two projects aimed at delivering eVTOL technology in Japan

Sky­ports has been accept­ed to par­tic­i­pate in two upcom­ing ini­tia­tives aimed at deliv­er­ing eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy in Japan’s Osa­ka Pre­fec­ture. 

The ver­ti­port devel­op­er and drone deliv­ery provider has been accept­ed as one of five organ­i­sa­tions to con­tribute indus­try exper­tise to the Osa­ka Pre­fec­ture Super City. Fol­low­ing a joint sub­mis­sion with Tokyo-based trad­ing com­pa­ny Kane­mat­su Cor­po­ra­tion, the project will see Sky­ports play a piv­otal role in the devel­op­ment of infra­struc­ture and drone deliv­ery ser­vices. 

Sky­ports has also been accept­ed into Osa­ka Prefecture’s ‘Green Table’, a col­lab­o­ra­tive round­table plat­form launched to accel­er­ate the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of advanced air mobil­i­ty. 

In addi­tion to work­ing with indus­try part­ners on the plan­ning of the net­work, Sky­ports aims to have an oper­a­tional pas­sen­ger eVTOL ver­ti­port in place by the Osa­ka-Kan­sai World Expo in 2025.

Dun­can Walk­er, chief exec­u­tive offi­cer at Sky­ports, said: “Our knowl­edge of locat­ing, design­ing, build­ing and oper­at­ing infra­struc­ture for air taxis and drone deliv­er­ies is sec­ond to none. As part of these projects, we are help­ing Osa­ka ful­fil its vision of become an urban air mobil­i­ty cen­tre in Japan, pro­vid­ing not only a vital facil­i­ty to sup­port the bur­geon­ing air taxi mar­ket, but demon­strat­ing the ben­e­fits that drone deliv­ery ser­vices will pro­vide to the region. 

“The fact that we have been select­ed to con­tribute to mul­ti­ple pro­grammes aimed at devel­op­ing Japan’s AAM ecosys­tem is tes­ta­ment to the work that Sky­ports does. We look for­ward to work­ing with new and exist­ing part­ners to enable AAM to thrive.”

The ‘Green Table’ is a forum in which to exam­ine the oper­a­tional, tech­ni­cal and infra­struc­tur­al require­ments of real­is­ing an eVTOL net­work. It is the sec­ond of three phas­es of round­table dis­cus­sions aim­ing to accel­er­ate the imple­men­ta­tion of fly­ing cars.

The pro­gramme brings togeth­er stake­hold­ers from across the auto­mo­bile, air­craft and advanced tech­nol­o­gy indus­tries, with the 2025 Osa­ka-Kan­sai Expo a com­mon mile­stone by which the con­sor­tium aims to ini­ti­ate the use of eVTOL vehi­cles.

While the city of Osa­ka, togeth­er with Osa­ka Pre­fec­ture, aims to become a mod­el smart city by pro­vid­ing cut­ting-edge ser­vices in mul­ti­ple fields and imple­ment­ing bold reg­u­la­to­ry reforms, there­by estab­lish­ing its place as a world leader in advanced tech­nol­o­gy and a pio­neer of city life of the future.

Ryo Segawa, Indus­tri­al Strat­e­gy Group, Indus­try Inno­va­tion Pro­mo­tion Divi­sion, Growth Indus­try Pro­mo­tion Office, Depart­ment of Com­merce, Indus­try and Labor, Osa­ka Pre­fec­tur­al Gov­ern­ment, said: “We under­stand that it is one of the most impor­tant sub­jects to build a user-friend­ly ver­ti­port which can be eas­i­ly utilised by eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­ers, fleet oper­a­tors, pas­sen­gers, and oth­er par­ties con­sid­er­ing the intro­duc­tion of eVTOL into soci­ety.

“In this con­text, we are very hap­py to wel­come Sky­ports to join Osa­ka Round Table because they have a broad knowl­edge and are active­ly work­ing in this area glob­al­ly. We are very much look­ing for­ward to hav­ing con­crete and prac­ti­cal dis­cus­sions with them.”