Volocopter’s 2X eVTOL air taxi flies at Paris Air Forum, VoloCity also on display at show

Volo­copter has con­duct­ed the first pub­lic flight demo of an eVTOL air­craft in France today (Mon­day), with its Volo­copter 2x com­plet­ing a three-minute flight at Le Bour­get Air­field dur­ing the Paris Air Forum.

The flight demon­stra­tion, which saw the Volo­copter 2X com­plete a 500 metre route at speeds of up to 30km/h, marks the begin­ning of a mul­ti-step test and mar­ket devel­op­ment cam­paign in co-oper­a­tion with the French Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty to bring eVTOL air­craft to the Île-de-France region.

Volo­copter also had its VoloC­i­ty mod­el at the show, where atten­dees could also sit inside and get a detailed expla­na­tion of the ben­e­fits of elec­tric air taxi ser­vices.

Flo­ri­an Reuter, Volo­copter CEO, said: “The first flight today in Paris high­lights Volocopter’s com­mit­ment to bring air taxi ser­vices to this region in time for the 2024 Olympic Games.

“The alliance of the Paris region, Groupe ADP, and RATP Groupe and their intent to bring elec­tric air taxis to France is a stel­lar exam­ple of the col­lab­o­ra­tive approach we see to be the most suc­cess­ful for adding this excit­ing cat­e­go­ry of mobil­i­ty to cities glob­al­ly.”

This isn’t the first time the Volo­copter 2X has been on dis­play to the pub­lic. The air­craft was at the Shang­hai Inter­na­tion­al Auto­mo­bile Indus­try Exhi­bi­tion in April, as part of Volo­copter’s tech­nol­o­gy part­ner­ship with Geely.

In France, Volo­copter was named the first vehi­cle and oper­a­tions part­ner for the launch of the urban air mobil­i­ty indus­tri­al branch in Paris in Sep­tem­ber 2020.

Now the com­pa­ny is plan­ning to open a local office, recruit staff and expand local part­ner­ships to ensure the new urban air mobil­i­ty solu­tions meet local demands. Volo­copter is also work­ing on an agree­ment with Groupe ADP and RATP Groupe to col­lab­o­rate for the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Edward Ark­wright, Deputy CEO of GROUPE ADP,  said: “Today, we were as close as nev­er before in France to expe­ri­ence elec­tric avi­a­tion. Volo­copter is a vivid exam­ple of what the futures of avi­a­tion could look like, both car­bon-free and inno­v­a­tive, that Groupe ADP wants to accom­pa­ny thanks to our infra­struc­ture assets, exper­tise, and know-how.

“Along with the oth­er part­ners of the RE.Invent Air Mobil­i­ty ini­tia­tive, Volo­copter is now ready to enter a first test flight cam­paign by Sep­tem­ber on the Pon­toise Air­field sand­box we have been build­ing up in the past months. And we are thrilled to be part­ner­ing with them, RATP Group and DGAC towards our objec­tive of flight demon­stra­tions in the Paris Region dur­ing the 2024 Olympic Games, to lay the foun­da­tion of a strong UAM indus­tri­al ecosys­tem in France.” 

Marie-Claude Dupuis, Direc­tor of Strat­e­gy, Inno­va­tion and Devel­op­ment of RATP Group, added: “After hav­ing respond­ed as the first play­er in the urban air mobil­i­ty indus­try, in the con­text of the call for expres­sions of inter­est, we are very pleased that Volo­copter has con­firmed its devel­op­ment and its estab­lish­ment in France. For RATP Group, this new mobil­i­ty aims to com­ple­ment our tra­di­tion­al trans­port modes.” 

Volo­copter is well advanced in the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process with the Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) for com­mer­cial launch. Last month, it revealed its long-range, fixed-wing eVTOL, Volo­Con­nect at EBACE Con­nect and has so far raised more than €300 mil­lion in fund­ing.

As the first and only eVTOL devel­op­er with Design Organ­i­sa­tion Approval (DOA) from EASA, Volo­copter’s approach to intro­duc­ing urban air mobil­i­ty ser­vices is to cre­ate an ecosys­tem where pas­sen­gers and goods expe­ri­ence seam­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty with their cities via Volocopter’s mobil­i­ty solu­tions.

Its air­craft port­fo­lio includes VoloC­i­ty for intra-city con­nec­tions, Volo­Con­nect for city-sub­urb con­nec­tion and the Volo­Drone for car­go trans­port. In terms of infra­struc­ture, its take-off and land­ing Volo­Ports are all ful­ly inte­grat­ed on the dig­i­tal plat­form VoloIQ.

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