German aviation startup Volocopter is partnering with Grab, the dominant passenger transportation app in Southeast Asia, to launch an air taxi experiment. The two corporations signed a memorandum of understanding to “consider probably the most suitable cities and routes for the deployment of air taxis in Southeast Asian cities; evaluate the perfect use cases for air taxis; and explore, amongst other things, the opportunity of joint flight testing,” Shoulder reported.
This is step one in a partnership that would ultimately end in actual test flights and deployment routes for air taxi services, although further developments will likely rely on the outcomes of this study and the following appetites of each parties involved.
Recently at a technology conference in Singapore, Volocopter demonstrated its electric aircraft together with a short lived “VoloPort” landing pad intended as an example a future during which we use electric VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) vehicles to hop from rooftop to rooftop in dense urban settings.
The partnership with Grab is one other sign that Volocopter sees Southeast Asia as a possible launching point for its aerial ambitions. Headquartered in Singapore, Grab also serves Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and Japan. “This collaboration also creates the potential for much broader cooperation that could ultimately expand intermodal mobility into the airspace,” Florian Reuter, CEO of Volocopter, said in a press release.
Grab appears to see Volocopter and the air taxi service it offers as one other potential piece in the general puzzle it’s putting together across various transportation methods. “This partnership will enable Volocopter to further develop urban air mobility solutions that will be relevant for commuters in Southeast Asia to seamlessly decide on their preferred travel option based on their budget, time constraints and other needs,” said Grab Ventures CEO Chris Yeo, as quoted by Techcrunch.
As a brilliant app operating in 339 cities in Southeast Asia, Grab has collected traffic patterns and customer insights within the region that might help our teams develop probably the most progressive mobility solutions to fill gaps within the transportation landscape,” he further added.
For a region known for its densely populated cities and unforgiving traffic, Southeast Asia will profit from on-demand air taxi services.
Indeed, insufficient road capability, aging infrastructure or poorly integrated public transport plague tens of millions of commuters every single day in sprawling metropolises corresponding to Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila and Bangkok.
However, launching and commercializing urban air mobility would require greater than just the Volocopter-Grab partnership.
Security is an obvious issue. Kitty Hawk – a flying automotive enterprise funded by Google co-founder Larry Page – has been affected by frequent battery failures and fires.
For now, bringing flying taxis to the masses might also be an enormous challenge. Uber tests vertical take-off and landing vehicles as a part of air ride-sharing enterprise uberAir estimates cost $5.73 per passenger mile. By contrast, owning a standard automotive within the United States costs between $0.464 and $0.608.
Therefore, it’s more likely that air taxis will turn into or remain an urban luxury for the upper class no less than for the primary few years.
Moreover, the local ecosystem – each physical and regulatory – in each Southeast Asian country may have to meet up with Grab-Volocopter’s expansion plans. For this reason, Volocopter can also be working with leading infrastructure, operations and air traffic management partners to construct local air taxi infrastructure.
Source: The Verge | Techcrunch | Get involved
