Volocopter, a Germany-based developer of urban air mobility vehicles, has unveiled the design for VoloCity, its newest inner-city air taxi model with a calculated range of 35km (56 miles) and an airspeed of 110km/h (68mph). This fourth-generation electrical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft has been designed with Mercedes-Benz Design to meet the SC-VTOL safety standards specified by EASA and incorporates user feedback as well as test data from more than 1,000 test flights on all three previous generations of Volocopter.
According to Volocopter, the VoloCity has several visible improvements tover the previous generations while still staying true to Volocopter’s key technical and safety features, namely having 18 rotors, redundancy in all critical systems, a low noise signature and a “rigid commitment” to the inner-city mission.
Features of VoloCity include a payload to accommodate two people including hand luggage; increased flight efficiency through aerodynamically shaped rotor beams and a newly introduced stabiliser to create increased stability in flight and additional lift; and a sleeker aesthetic.
“The VoloCity is our most powerful Volocopter yet. It is rigorously designed to meet the demands of urban air mobility and incorporates all requirements of the SC-VTOL certification standard established by EASA in July 2019. It is a result of all insights we have gathered from our extensive testing programmes over the past years,” stated Florian Reuter, CEO of Volocopter. “With the VoloCity we will open the first commercial routes and bring urban air mobility to life.”
The company is now focusing on establishing the necessary ecosystem around the aircraft to bring on-demand urban air mobility services to life. This work entails building up the operational environment such as the physical take-off and landing infrastructure and integrating into air traffic management systems of participating cities. Volocopter is working with global players like Fraport, the operator of Frankfurt International Airport (FRA) to optimise passenger and ground procedures and align regulations with the relevant authorities.
Until the commissioning of VoloCity, Volocopter plans to continue testing, improving and demonstrating the current pre-series model of the aircraft, codenamed 2X. A public test flight is scheduled for Q4 this year in Singapore, where Volocopter will also display the first VoloPort urban air mobility infrastructure prototype together with its partner, Skyports.
