Urban air mobility (UAM) company Volocopter has unveiled its newest aircraft, VoloConnect, at EBACE Connect.

The 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 hybrid lift and push design is expected to achieve certification within the next five years.

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

Volocopter is developing full UAM ecosystem

Volocopter is developing a full ecosystem into UAM which 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. Volocopter is the only eVTOL developer with a product portfolio of multicopter and fixed wing designs which can be used for passenger and cargo transportation.

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 around 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, led by Chief Engineer Sebastian Mores, have been working on the aircraft for over two years and have filed several patents for its technology. They are already flying multiple scaled prototypes of VoloConnect and are quickly progressing towards testing full scale prototypes.

“Strong market demand”

Florian Reuter, Volocopter CEO said: “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.”

“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.”

VoloConnect is designed to increase Volocopter’s total addressable UAM market while preserving the company’s high standard of sustainable, safe urban flight.

Volocopter is the first and only eVTOL company so far to attain Design Organisation Approval from European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Volocopter has developed long-standing, relationships with cities like Singapore, Paris, and Dubai, demonstrating its expertise in electric flight for inner-city mobility.

Video: Volocopter

 

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