VoloConnect: Expanding Volocopter's Coverage of the Urban Air Mobility Ecosystem

BRUCHSAL, Germany and MUNICH, May 17, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Volocopter, the pioneer of urban air mobility (UAM), unveiled its newest aircraft, VoloConnect, at EBACE Connect. This electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL) is designed to connect suburbs to cities and complements ­the company's existing family of aircraft for the intra-city mission. VoloConnect's distinctive hybrid lift and push design is expected to achieve certification within the next 5 years.

With the capacity to travel longer distances, VoloConnect joins Volocopter's aircraft family and extends the company's UAM ecosystem coverage to the suburbs. The new aircraft will be seamlessly integrated into Volocopter's existing portfolio of UAM ecosystem solutions: VoloDrone, VoloCity, VoloPort, and the digital platform, VoloIQ.

"VoloConnect embodies the next dimension of our mission to offer affordable, efficient, and sustainable flight mobility solutions for cities around the globe. Leveraging customer insights from our existing VoloCity and VoloDrone, VoloConnect's capacity to support longer missions and higher payloads serves another strong growing market demand," says Florian Reuter, Volocopter CEO. "We are confident that this aircraft family, and the years of experience and leading innovation on which it's founded, will pioneer the way for electric UAM services to launch commercially and internationally."

Volocopter takes a holistic approach to UAM by developing a full ecosystem that connects the necessary components to offer electric flight in cities. This ecosystem includes partnerships with global leaders such as Aéroports de Paris, Microsoft Azure, Lufthansa Industry Solutions, and many more. Additionally, Volocopter is the only eVTOL developer with a product portfolio of multicopter and fixed wing designs that can be used for passenger and cargo transportation.

VoloConnect – Safe, Emission-Free Urban Flight

VoloConnect enhances Volocopter's vehicle line up and extends its UAM ecosystem coverage from the city to the suburban areas. The new aircraft will seamlessly integrate into the company's VoloIQ digital platform infrastructure to offer an additional mission for longer routes.

VoloConnect uses a hybrid lift and push design to transport up to four passengers electrically on routes of 100 km at a speed of 180 km/h, with a top speed of ~250 km/h. The compact aircraft layout, necessary for urban missions, is naturally stable and highly efficient during forward flight while maintaining a low stall speed. Volocopter's Munich-based team of experts, led by Chief Engineer Sebastian Mores, have been working on the aircraft for over two years and filed several patents for its technology. They are already flying multiple scaled prototypes of VoloConnect and are quickly progressing towards testing full scale prototypes.

VoloConnect target vehicle specifications include:

VoloConnect is designed to increase Volocopter's total addressable UAM market while preserving the company's high standard of sustainable, safe urban flight. As the newest addition to Volocopter's aircraft family, VoloConnect carries on Volocopter's track record of developing high-tech, electric aircraft for the urban mission. 

Volocopter is the first and only eVTOL company thus far to attain Design Organisation Approval from European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), the regulator with the highest safety standards for aircraft certification in the world. Through long-standing, fruitful relationships with cities like Singapore, Paris, and Dubai, Volocopter has consistently and publicly demonstrated its expertise in electric flight for inner-city mobility.

About Volocopter GmbH 
Volocopter is building the world's first sustainable and scalable urban air mobility business to bring affordable air taxi services to megacities worldwide. With the VoloCity, the company is developing the first fully electric "eVTOL" aircraft in certification to transport passengers safely and quietly within cities. Volocopter leads and cooperates with partners in infrastructure, operations, and air traffic management to build the ecosystem necessary to 'Bring Urban Air Mobility to Life'.

In 2011, Volocopter performed the first-ever crewed flight of a purely electric multicopter and has since showcased numerous public flights with its full-scale aircraft. The most notable have been the public test flights at Singapore's Marina Bay in October 2019 and the world's first autonomous eVTOL flight in Dubai 2017. Volocopter is also developing products for the logistics space with their heavy-lift cargo variant, the VoloDrone.

Founded in 2011 by Stephan Wolf and Alexander Zosel, Volocopter has 300 employees in offices in Bruchsal, Munich, and Singapore. The company has raised a total of €322 million in equity. Volocopter's investors include Daimler, Geely, DB Schenker, BlackRock, and Intel Capital amongst others.

Find out more at: www.volocopter.com

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SOURCE Volocopter