Urban-Air Port and Hyundai Air Mobility to work on new UAM infrastructure and invest in full-scale prototype

Urban-Air Port Ltd has announced a part­ner­ship with Hyundai Air Mobil­i­ty to explore and devel­op pur­pose-built, mul­ti-func­tion­al and scal­able infra­struc­ture for the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket.

Both com­pa­nies also plan to invest in the devel­op­ment of a full-scale pro­to­type for live eVTOL demon­stra­tions in 2021. Two UK cities have already com­mit­ted to this ini­tia­tive, one of which is Coven­try — the UK’s City of Cul­ture for 2021 and addi­tion­al host city of the 2022 Com­mon­wealth Games.

Ricky Sand­hu, CEO of Urban-Air Port, said: “We are extreme­ly proud to announce our part­ner­ship with Hyundai Air Mobil­i­ty, as we embark on bring­ing togeth­er world-class eVTOL vehi­cle OEMs, pas­sen­ger and logis­tics ser­vice oper­a­tors and our phys­i­cal & dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture in our unique, flex­i­ble and sus­tain­able turn-key “Air-OneTM ” approach.

“We believe it will help unlock and pro­pel a clean, future UAM mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem both here in the UK and around the world for mul­ti­ple sec­tors.”

Hyundai’s and Urban-Air Port’s goals in this part­ner­ship is to trans­form cities for the bet­ter, by cre­at­ing a ver­sa­tile infra­struc­ture that enables future mobil­i­ty, vitalis­es urban com­mu­ni­ties, and expands access to trans­porta­tion ser­vices and the green econ­o­my.

Urban-Air Port says its design has a foot­print 60 per cent small­er than a tra­di­tion­al heli­port or near­est-state-of-the-art ‘ver­ti­ports’, allow­ing for quick and easy instal­la­tion in space-lim­it­ed urban sites.

Its mod­u­lar flat-pack struc­ture results in a cost-effec­tive, trans­portable and rapid­ly deploy­able new form of infra­struc­ture, pro­vid­ing both passenger/cargo processing/amenities and vehi­cle charging/maintenance facil­i­ties with­in its ultra-com­pact form.

Auto­mo­tive giant Hyundai plans to invest $1.5 bil­lion over the next five years to cre­ate an air vehi­cle and the sup­port­ing mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem for UAM oper­a­tions. The com­pa­ny fore­casts the air mobil­i­ty mar­ket will be worth near­ly $1.5 tril­lion over the next 20 years.

Pamela Cohn, COO of Hyundai Air Mobil­i­ty, said: “There is often a strong focus on the vehi­cles, but with­out coor­di­na­tion and invest­ment in oth­er parts of the ecosys­tem, UAM is just a fly­ing sci­ence project.

“Infra­struc­ture is one of the cru­cial areas of the broad­er ecosys­tem that will bring aer­i­al mobil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­ties around the world. We are excit­ed to part­ner with Urban-Air Port and UK com­mu­ni­ties to explore what this infra­struc­ture of the future will look like.”

Urban-Air Port Ltd is a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary of small. (Six Miles Across Lon­don Lim­it­ed), con­sist­ing a group of UK-based Urban DeepTech com­pa­nies focus­ing on Future Mobil­i­ty, Urban.AV (Autonomous Vehi­cles), Urban.MASS (Mass Tran­sit) and Urban-Air Port.