Volocopter and Geely finalise joint venture to launch urban air mobility services in China, includes order for 150 eVTOL aircraft

Volo­copter and Aerofu­gia, a sub­sidiary of Chi­na’s inno­va­tion-dri­ven group, Geely Tech­nol­o­gy Group, have announced the final­iza­tion of their joint ven­ture com­pa­ny to intro­duce urban air mobil­i­ty in Chi­na.

Oper­at­ing under Volo­copter Cheng­du, the joint ven­ture has signed an agree­ment to pur­chase 150 eVTOL air­craft from Volo­copter, with Geely Hold­ing Group’s CEO, Daniel Li Donghui, join­ing Volo­copter’s Advi­so­ry Board. 

Flo­ri­an Reuter, CEO of Volo­copter, said: “Geely has been a valu­able part­ner since they became our strate­gic investor in 2019. Today marks anoth­er impor­tant mile­stone on our jour­ney to bring afford­able elec­tric air mobil­i­ty to Chi­na, the biggest sin­gle mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ty for the UAM indus­try.

“With the joint ven­ture com­pa­ny up and run­ning and Daniel Li Donghui as the new Geely rep­re­sen­ta­tive on our Advi­so­ry Board, we are in pole posi­tion to intro­duce air taxi ser­vices glob­al­ly in a safe, sus­tain­able, and prac­ti­cal man­ner.” 

The joint ven­ture will work close­ly with the avi­a­tion, trans­porta­tion, and gov­ern­ment agen­cies in Cheng­du and oth­er parts of main­land Chi­na to bring urban air mobil­i­ty to Chi­na with­in the next three to five years.

Cheng­du is the cap­i­tal of Sichuan Province and a sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic, cul­tur­al, and trans­porta­tion hub in West­ern Chi­na. It is also a key man­u­fac­tur­ing base for Geely – one of many great syn­er­gies the JV will prof­it from on top of Geely’s pro­duc­tion capa­bil­i­ty and indus­tri­al dis­tri­b­u­tion exper­tise. 

Ingrid Delfs, Con­sul of the Ger­man Con­sulate Gen­er­al in Cheng­du, says, “Chi­na and Ger­many look back on many years of good rela­tions — we cel­e­brate 50 years of the estab­lish­ment of diplo­mat­ic rela­tions next year — and we are now wit­ness­ing deep­en­ing Sino-Ger­man coop­er­a­tion in var­i­ous sec­tors, espe­cial­ly in new areas such as dig­i­tal­iza­tion, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and, in this case, urban air mobil­i­ty. We are con­vinced that coop­er­a­tion in the field of inno­va­tion will bring ben­e­fits to both coun­tries.” 

At the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, Volo­copter also signed a Con­tract Man­u­fac­tur­ing Agree­ment with Volo­copter Cheng­du and Gen­er­al Avi­a­tion Man­u­fac­to­ry Base of Geely Tech­nol­o­gy to pro­duce Volo­copter’s air­craft and parts in Chi­na. This pro­duc­tion agree­ment will sat­is­fy the fast-grow­ing demand for air taxi ser­vices after com­mer­cial launch in Chi­na. 

Jing Chao, Chair­man of Volo­copter Cheng­du, added: “With its estab­lish­ment, Volo­copter Cheng­du can accel­er­ate the deploy­ment of air taxis and UAM busi­ness. UAM is an impor­tant part of the new avi­a­tion indus­try, which coin­cides with Aerofu­gia’s tech­ni­cal route and busi­ness plan of ‘new ener­gy, ver­ti­cal land­ing and take-off, and autonomous dri­ving.’ As an investor for both Aerofu­gia and Volo­copter, Geely looks for­ward to Volo­copter Cheng­du real­iz­ing urban air mobil­i­ty in the near future.” 

As the first and only eVTOL com­pa­ny glob­al­ly to obtain Design Organ­i­sa­tion Approval from Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency in 2019 and sub­se­quent­ly secure Pro­duc­tion Organ­i­sa­tion Approval in 2021, Volo­copter is devel­op­ing its fam­i­ly of air­craft for pas­sen­gers (VoloC­i­ty and Volo­Con­nect), and goods (Volo­Drone).

In April 2021, Geely and Volo­copter con­firmed that they would form a joint ven­ture to intro­duce the new mode of trans­porta­tion to Chi­na. Both com­pa­nies will joint­ly par­tic­i­pate in the Zhuhai Air­show at Hall 3 from 28 Sep­tem­ber to 3 Octo­ber.