Volocopter Suffers Two Recent SetBacks as Company Vies to Pioneer the Emerging eVTOL Industry

It is nev­er easy to be a pio­neer in an emerg­ing new mar­ket, espe­cial­ly one like the eVTOL indus­try. Set­backs are com­mon, dis­ap­point­ments the norm, and Ger­man-based Volo­copter suf­fered not one but two last week.

On Fri­day (Novem­ber 17th), news broke that Volocopter’s plans to begin a 15 minute air taxi flight in the Mari­na Bay area of Sin­ga­pore, ear­ly next year, along­side the hir­ing of key staff, has been put on hold — indef­i­nite­ly — as the Ger­man com­pa­ny can­not secure local part­ners to share the large fund­ing required for such an enter­prise.

straitstimes.com quot­ed a Volo­copter spokesper­son, “We will con­tin­ue to look for local cost-shar­ing part­ners and Sin­ga­pore remains our Asia-Pacif­ic head­quar­ters. Once these part­ners have been found, we will recon­sid­er the launch time­line in Sin­ga­pore.”

The spokesper­son explained that its com­mer­cial oper­a­tions rely on the coop­er­a­tion of cities. This requires the adap­ta­tion or con­struc­tion of new infra­struc­ture, route and reg­u­la­to­ry plan­ning, and the devel­op­ment of a dig­i­tal net­work. Adding, “We are pri­ori­tis­ing cities that can accel­er­ate (these) aspects, and adjust­ing our glob­al busi­ness strat­e­gy and time­line accord­ing­ly.”

Volo­copter is unable to spec­i­fy the amount of funds need­ed to launch the Sin­ga­pore oper­a­tions, point­ing out that “dif­fer­ent mar­kets have vary­ing sit­u­a­tions and part­ners.” To begin com­mer­cial air taxi ser­vices in the city, the com­pa­ny said “it would require a com­plete urban air mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem, includ­ing air­craft, infra­struc­ture and con­nec­tiv­i­ty.”

Sin­ga­pore

While Volo­copter has already attract­ed close to USD750 mil­lion invest­ment via five fund-rais­ing rounds, Dr James Wang, direc­tor of the Elec­tric Ver­ti­cal Take-off and Land­ing Research and Inno­va­tion Cen­tre at the Nanyang Tech­no­log­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ty, believes to suc­cess­ful­ly devel­op an air taxi com­pa­ny from scratch, it is nec­es­sary to secure fund­ing of at least USD1 bil­lion which includes recruit­ing expe­ri­enced air­craft design­ers and build­ing strong links across the sup­ply chain net­work. As impor­tant as the financ­ing, there is also the required sup­port from both local gov­ern­ment and the pub­lic for such an inno­v­a­tive project.

Two days lat­er anoth­er set­back occurred, when Volocopter’s future “jew­el in its crown” flights over Paris dur­ing the Olympic Games, next July and August, has hit a major stum­bling block. 

The French Capital’s coun­cil­lors have react­ed to the idea with a stun­ning neg­a­tive reac­tion, call­ing the plans as “Absurd” and an “eco­log­i­cal aber­ra­tion.” Dan Lert, a Deputy May­or of the Con­sul de Paris, went even fur­ther describ­ing such fly­ing taxi oper­a­tions as “a total­ly use­less, hyper-pol­lut­ing gim­mick for a few ultra-priv­i­leged peo­ple in a hur­ry.”

The Autorité Envi­ron­nemen­tale Française had already expressed its reser­va­tions about the scheme. It said an impact study for an exper­i­men­tal ver­ti­port on the Seine, at the quai du port d’Austerlitz, was “incom­plete”, and raised con­cerns over sound and visu­al pol­lu­tion, ener­gy con­sump­tion and ground and air­borne safe­ty risks.

The inten­tion is to fly five to ten eVTOL air­craft dur­ing the 2024 Olympics, (con­sist­ing of three con­nec­tion jour­neys and two round-trip tourist flights) in and around the cap­i­tal, includ­ing a shut­tle ser­vice from the air­port to the city cen­tre, cut­ting a 45-minute jour­ney to 10 min­utes, for a price of EUR110 per per­son. Anoth­er fly­ing taxi will be tak­ing off and land­ing from a barge on the riv­er Seine.

Oppo­si­tion to the plans is, seem­ing­ly, across the board from mem­bers of the city coun­cil. Par­ti Social­iste coun­cil­lor, Flo­ri­an Sit­bon, com­ment­ed, “To save a few min­utes for a few wealthy peo­ple in a hur­ry, who are igno­rant and con­temp­tu­ous of the cli­mate emer­gency, we would be pol­lut­ing the atmos­phere and destroy­ing the sound envi­ron­ment.”

Mean­while, the may­or of the 15th arrondisse­ment, Repub­li­cain Philippe Gou­jon, reit­er­at­ed his ambi­tion to close the Issy-les-Moulin­eaux heli­port com­plete­ly, a major pro­posed take­off and land­ing hub for the project.

Chang­er Paris coun­cil­lor Claire de Cler­mont-Ton­nerre added, “The con­sump­tion of these fly­ing machines, near­ly 190 kWh per 100 km, is two to three times high­er than that of a com­bus­tion-pow­ered car to trans­port a sin­gle pas­sen­ger.”  

And con­tin­ued, “It’s a new use that we absolute­ly don’t need…, just as we’ve seen with self-ser­vice scoot­ers.” While Com­mu­nist coun­cil­lor Jean-Noël Aqua point­ed out that pas­sen­gers would have to pay “the mod­est sum of EUR140 for 35km.”

The Aéro­ports de Paris (ADP) group, along with Ger­man man­u­fac­tur­er Volo­copter and the Ile-de-France region, have always stat­ed the plans “are an exper­i­ment with a new mobil­i­ty offer in very dense urban areas.”

Flo­ri­an Sit­bon

So what can be learned from these set­backs?

The delay in Sin­ga­pore is under­stand­able and can be put down to present finan­cial fac­tors. Volo­copter has stat­ed that because of glob­al uncer­tain­ties, both geopo­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic, it was ful­ly expect­ing that fund rais­ing would be more chal­leng­ing, espe­cial­ly giv­en the mon­e­tary risks involved in such a new and com­mer­cial­ly untest­ed mar­ket. This is a high risk invest­ment.

And unlike oth­er glob­al city regions, Sin­ga­pore does not have the same dire need for air taxis as roads are not as con­gest­ed as those in some oth­er cities.  Sin­ga­pore is a city, a nation and a state, and is only about 275 square miles, small­er than the State of Rhode Island, and inhab­it­ed by just five mil­lion peo­ple, where the dis­tance from one end to the oth­er is not sig­nif­i­cant, giv­en the country’s size.

Dr Wang points out that “investors may not see a high return on their invest­ment in Singapore’s air taxi sec­tor, com­pared with the prof­its they could earn from cities with greater traf­fic con­ges­tion.”

Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor, Ter­ence Fan, a Trans­port Spe­cial­ist from the Sin­ga­pore Man­age­ment Uni­ver­si­ty, agrees say­ing a size­able local demand and many dai­ly jour­neys would be need­ed to sim­ply cov­er the costs of such oper­a­tions.

As air taxis can trav­el only along fixed routes from one ver­ti­port to anoth­er, pas­sen­gers may still have to jour­ney by land to get to their des­ti­na­tions, and why Dr Wang believes that air taxis could be more use­ful con­nect­ing Sin­ga­pore to cities close by. Even then, cross-bor­der flights from Sin­ga­pore to say Indone­sia and Malaysia “are still full of obsta­cles” because “there are no present and clear reg­u­la­to­ry guide­lines for such ser­vices.”

This leads to an obvi­ous ques­tion: Has Volo­copter cho­sen the wrong region? Sure­ly, India might be bet­ter where road con­ges­tion in major cities is far worse and where there is a greater pop­u­la­tion.

Ren­der­ing of the pro­posed and con­tro­ver­sial float­ing ver­ti­port at Quai d’Austerlitz ( Source: Ae Opin­ion 2023–46)

As to Paris, social­ist pol­i­tics com­bined with a degree of igno­rance seems appar­ent. It is easy for the eVTOL indus­try to remain in a bub­ble as it speeds along with its devel­op­ment like some crazed rac­er, attempt­ing to beat all oppo­si­tion to the fin­ish­ing line. Yet, if you don’t gain the con­fi­dence of the pub­lic first and, more impor­tant­ly, local coun­cils who may decide whether the eVTOL indus­try will fail or suc­ceed, all the hard work and effort could come to noth­ing.

Edu­ca­tion, edu­ca­tion, edu­ca­tion.

The Parisien cyn­i­cism and cheap jibes are under­stand­able. For those from the polit­i­cal left, all they see is yet anoth­er cap­i­tal­ist cre­ation aimed at the wealthy. Although, for the Par­ti Social­iste coun­cil­lor, to state, “To save a few min­utes for a few wealthy peo­ple in a hur­ry, who are igno­rant and con­temp­tu­ous of the cli­mate emer­gency, we would be pol­lut­ing the atmos­phere and destroy­ing the sound envi­ron­ment” is bizarre and shows how lit­tle is under­stood about air taxis. “A few wealthy peo­ple in a hur­ry” is a fair com­ment. Until the air­craft become autonomous, prices will be high, but as the indus­try points out, no high­er than the cost of an Uber Black. Crit­i­cism of the air­craft “pol­lut­ing the atmos­phere and destroy­ing the sound envi­ron­ment” is utter pif­fle. If any­thing it is the oth­er way around.

Edu­ca­tion, edu­ca­tion, edu­ca­tion.

Sure­ly, what Volo­copter and its sup­port­ers must now do is to invest a large sum of mon­ey to intense­ly edu­cate both the Paris coun­cil­lors and pub­lic. The Olympic Games is just eight months away. The notion that the city will ban Volo­copter from fly­ing at the Games will be a major set­back for the indus­try. Yet, despite the present scale of oppo­si­tion, the scheme could still go ahead. The Min­istry of Trans­port is set to make a deci­sion “at the begin­ning of 2024.” It is like­ly they will be more favourable to the idea.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.volocopter.com/en

(News Source: https://www.straitstimes.com/https://www.thelocal.fr)

(Top image: Voloc­i­ty Fly­ing Over Mari­na Bay, Sin­ga­pore — Cred­it: Volo­copter)