Volocopter CEO Florian Reuter spoke with ANN about the successful public test flight they took for their eVTOL aircraft at Oshkosh. They wanted to fly in front of a crowd and that mission was accomplished, with proper FAA permissions of course.
“What we saw with the 2X generation, the previous generation aircraft, we’ve been flying this for quite some time, over 1000 test flights amassed on that generation of aircraft. We are flying remote controlled, piloted aircraft as well as fully autonomous,” Reuter says.
The company expects their newest aircraft, the VoloCity, to be the first certified vehicle to be allowed to conduct commercial air transportation, and air taxi services in cities all around the world. The VoloCity stayed very true to the original design decisions, keeping 18 rotors, 9 battery packs. They switched from low voltage to high voltage to give some weight advantages, according to Reuter.
“We designed the vehicle around the urban mission and the customer experience,” he continues. Reuter says the company is about two years from commercial launch of their vehicles. The company's business model is based on statistics in the travel and transportation world today, looking at one to two passengers vs a larger count.
“We are absolutely convinced that in the urban section, the section where this disruption is going to start, where we are squarely putting the VoloCity in, an average occupancy of one is what we observe. So when you look at taxi occupancy, Uber Black occupancy, even beyond the US or western markets there is a huge trend towards people using shared rides or taxi alone. So there is a huge growing market for single occupancy, which puts us into a perfect spot because here we have a vehicle, it's a two seater, it is all electric and fully capable of serving the mission already today,” he continues. “We see 90% of all trips performed with one passenger alone.”
While focus stays on the VoloCity, Volocopter has had numerous requests for a cargo drone, which it answered with the VoloDrone. The VoloDrone has a 440 pound payload, targeting the urban logistics market.
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