German aviation startup Volocopter is partnering with Grab, the dominant passenger transportation app in Southeast Asia, to launch an air taxi experiment. The two firms signed a memorandum of understanding to “consider the most suitable cities and routes for the deployment of air taxis in Southeast Asian cities; evaluate the best use cases for air taxis; and explore, among other things, the possibility of joint flight testing.”
Recently at a technology conference in Singapore, Volocopter demonstrated its electric aircraft together with a brief “VoloPort” landing pad intended as an instance a future by which we use electric VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) vehicles to hop from rooftop to rooftop in dense urban settings.
Volocopter’s 2X plane is a small, egg-shaped multicopter with a large halo of 18 rotors. It’s essentially an air taxi built to hold just one passenger at a time through traffic, overcrowding and closed roads below.
But fairly than facilitating mass air travel between cities comparable to an airport, Volocopter desires to deal with local point-to-point travel. He says that when the corporate begins business flights in 2022, passengers shall be transported from one VoloPort to a different.
By 2035, the corporate goals to have dozens of VoloPorts across Singapore, each able to handling 10,000 passengers per day. The ultimate goal is to not need any special infrastructure for the 2X to land in a parking zone and take you to the films.
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 an announcement.
Source : Edge
