Vertiko Mobilité, Jaunt Air Mobility Awarded USD2 Million “to Accelerate Development of AAM in Canada”

Fol­low­ing the launch of the Cana­di­an CORRIDAIR Project last Sep­tem­ber, Ver­tiko Mobil­ité, a ver­ti­port devel­op­er and Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty, an elec­tric-pow­ered rotor­craft pro­duc­er, are col­lab­o­rat­ing to iden­ti­fy var­i­ous tech­nolo­gies required to set up an infra­struc­ture for the com­mer­cial drone oper­a­tion of Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) in Cana­da, reports a press release.

The part­ners will be sup­port­ed by Thales, CAE, ASDR, Taï­ga Tele­com, Drone Express and SCI Cana­da, all under the ‘Con­sor­tium de Recherche et D’in­no­va­tion en Aérospa­tiale au Québec’ (CRIAQ) umbrel­la. 

The project has been award­ed USD2 mil­lion by the Que­bec Min­istère de l’É­conomie, de l’In­no­va­tion et de l’Énergie. The aim is to tri­al an air cor­ri­dor between the Joli­ette City Hos­pi­tal in south­west Que­bec to the Atikamekw First Nation com­mu­ni­ty of Man­awan, locat­ed on the shores of Lake Métabeské­ga in the Lanaudière region.

Guil­laume Côté, Pres­i­dent and CEO of CRIAQ, com­ment­ed, “We view the plat­form as pri­mar­i­ly address­ing the poten­tial social issues as well as the trans­porta­tion advance­ments of health prod­ucts via the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) sec­tor. We must take these impor­tant ele­ments in to account.” 

Pierre Fitzgib­bon, Min­is­ter of the Econ­o­my, Inno­va­tion and Ener­gy, respon­si­ble for Region­al Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment and Greater Mon­tre­al Area, added, “The CORRIDAIR project is an impor­tant step in plac­ing Que­bec at the fore­front of drone and air cab tech­nolo­gies. By invest­ing in this infra­struc­ture, we’re not only advanc­ing the tech­nol­o­gy, we’re also paving the way for viable, sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­els capa­ble of meet­ing the needs of iso­lat­ed regions.” 

For Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty, in par­tic­u­lar, this Que­bec award is an impor­tant sign that eVTOL ser­vices are want­ed in the provin­cial ter­ri­to­ry. Éric Côté, the com­pa­ny Pres­i­dent, remarked, “Devel­op­ing an air­craft is one thing, but if you don’t inte­grate them into an oper­at­ing sys­tem, it will remain an inac­ces­si­ble tech­nol­o­gy, dif­fi­cult to gain social accep­tance. It was this objec­tive that sealed the part­ner­ship between us and Ver­tiko Mobil­ité.”

Guil­laume Côté

Thales, a lead­ing Unmanned Aer­i­al Sys­tems (UAS) Traf­fic Man­age­ment com­pa­ny (UTM) has joined the team of col­lab­o­ra­tors on the project. Thales is a tech­nol­o­gy part­ner for Van­tis, North Dako­ta’s sys­tem of ser­vices enabling BVLOS UAS oper­a­tions through the North­ern Plains Test Site. Thales will offer impor­tant know-how and val­i­dat­ed data to  progress the project.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://jauntairmobility.com/

https://www.vertikomobilite.ca

https://www.criaq.aero/en/

(Top image: Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty)

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