Varon Vehicles adds PS&S to growing list of companies helping to bring urban air mobility to Latin America

Varon Vehi­cles has signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing with PS&S Archi­tec­ture and Engi­neer­ing, as it con­tin­ues to build an impres­sive list of com­pa­nies which will help devel­op an aer­i­al mobil­i­ty sys­tem in Latin Amer­i­ca.

The com­pa­ny — led by CEO and founder Felipe Varon — is devel­op­ing what it describes as a unique and rev­o­lu­tion­ary type of aer­i­al mobil­i­ty sys­tem called Infra­struc­ture Net­works. It aims to gen­er­ate new con­nec­tiv­i­ty for cities in the region, with­out the need for phys­i­cal per-mile con­struc­tion.

Under this new part­ner­ship, PS&S’ team of expe­ri­enced archi­tects, engi­neers and envi­ron­men­tal sci­en­tists will now offer advice, plan­ning, con­cep­tu­al design — as well as site and build­ing design — and oth­er relat­ed ser­vices to Varon Vehi­cles and its ver­ti­port require­ments. Varon Vehi­cles plans to launch its first aer­i­al mobil­i­ty sys­tem in Colom­bia.

John Sar­tor, CEO of PS&S and who also leads the com­pa­ny’s Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Task Force, said: “We are pleased to work with Varon Vehi­cles as they have devel­oped unique and focused Urban Air Mobil­i­ty eco-sys­tem solu­tions that will pro­vide much need­ed com­mu­ni­ty-cen­tered aer­i­al trans­porta­tion ser­vices. Our exten­sive expe­ri­ence, project approach and capa­bil­i­ties will sup­port Varon Vehi­cles’ vision of cre­at­ing aer­i­al pas­sen­ger and car­go ser­vices across and with­in urban cen­tres”

PS&S set up the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Task Force in May 2019 to pur­sue design oppor­tu­ni­ties with­in the aer­i­al trans­port indus­try. As well as Sar­tor, it is also man­aged by archi­tects Ted Osborne, Jen­nifer Gan­ley and Chuck Clauser, who spoke to eVTOL Insights about its work as part of its pop­u­lar pod­cast series.

In addi­tion to a staff com­prised of archi­tects, inte­ri­or design­ers, and the engi­neer­ing dis­ci­plines of civ­il, sur­vey, struc­tur­al, mechan­i­cal, plumb­ing, fire pro­tec­tion, and elec­tri­cal per­son­nel, PS&S main­tains strong work­ing rela­tion­ships with a vari­ety of con­sul­tants includ­ing aer­i­al infra­struc­ture, heli­port design­ers, acousti­cal engi­neer­ing, cost esti­mat­ing, pre­con­struc­tion ser­vices, and relat­ed spe­cial­ties.

Com­ment­ing on the new part­ner­ship with PS&S, Varon added: “PS&S’s ful­ly inte­grat­ed design process­es pro­vide us with tar­get­ed infra­struc­ture solu­tions that meet the company’s aes­thet­ic, func­tion­al and tech­ni­cal imper­a­tives. We are focused on devel­op­ing attrac­tive, func­tion­al, sus­tain­able, effi­cient, and cost- effec­tive archi­tec­ture in our com­mu­ni­ties that meets the needs and vision of our Urban Air Mobil­i­ty flight oper­a­tions.

“PS&S’s proven record in the nascent UAM indus­try and their under­stand­ing of urban avi­a­tion oper­a­tions was a major fac­tor in choos­ing them as a design part­ner, as we con­tin­ue to grow our world-class net­work of part­ners to pro­vide the high­est lev­el of safe­ty and ser­vice. We see Urban Air Mobil­i­ty in its entire­ty as a new form of mobil­i­ty infra­struc­ture with which we’re focus­ing on solv­ing urban prob­lems”.

Varon Vehi­cles is devel­op­ing its inno­v­a­tive trans­porta­tion sys­tem with enabling tech­nolo­gies from the next gen­er­a­tion of avi­a­tion and advanced air mobil­i­ty, using cur­rent­ly untapped air­space.

It con­sists of a series of ver­ti­ports con­nect­ed to each oth­er via well-defined low alti­tude vir­tu­al lanes through which their air vehi­cles will fly, with­out adding a bur­den on Air Traf­fic Con­trol or mix­ing with tra­di­tion­al avi­a­tion.

Varon Vehi­cles ver­ti­ports will be placed both inside and out­side exist­ing urban struc­tures to alle­vi­ate pres­sure for city growth, pro­vid­ing trans­porta­tion ser­vices to mul­ti­ple cus­tomers like logis­tics com­pa­nies, tourism com­pa­nies, hos­pi­tals, law enforce­ment, and trans­porta­tion net­work com­pa­nies (TNC’s), for ser­vices like air taxis.

The firm has already announced sim­i­lar part­ner­ships with eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty and TruWeath­er Solu­tions and as part of this lat­est asso­ci­a­tion with PS&S, it will be pro­vid­ed with a col­lab­o­ra­tive frame­work for its ver­ti­port require­ments.

eVTOL Insights spoke in more detail with Varon as part of an in-depth inter­view, which focused on the com­pa­ny’s vision for the region and what chal­lenges lie ahead as it works towards the launch of its first ser­vices.