Eve Urban Air Mobility Solutions is to provide rideshare booking platform Ascent with up to 100,000 flight hours in its planned four-passenger eVTOL aircraft beginning in 2026. In an agreement announced on August 23, the Embraer subsidiary said that it intends to deploy up to around 100 copies of the new model, which it calls the Electrical Vertical Aircraft (EVA), to unnamed operating partners in the Asia Pacific region.
Initially, Eve and Ascent intend to offer flights in locations including Singapore; Tokyo; Bangkok, Thailand; Manila, Philippines; and Melbourne, Australia. The companies did not disclose the exact terms of the extension of their existing partnership to develop urban air mobility (UAM) services in the region, but the deal appears to be somewhat similar to the one that Eve announced with Latin American on-demand charter platform Flapper in July and an earlier agreement with Blade in the U.S. market.
Since June, Singapore-based Ascent has been collaborating with Eve on various aspects of UAM planning. The company, which so far has been mainly involved in marketing helicopter charter capacity, has been seeking to establish itself as a UAM service provider in the Asia Pacific region. In addition to arranging passenger flights, it has been involved in deploying rotorcraft for emergency medical support and other applications. It has previously signed a cooperation agreement with another VTOL aircraft developer called Urban Aeronautics.
Since flying what it called an “engineering simulator” in July 2020, followed by a proof-of-concept model in October 2020, Eve has not provided much further information on the development process for the EVA model. Parent company Embraer is in talks with a special purpose acquisition company called Zanite Acquisition with a view to spinning off Eve via a merger that would lead to an initial public offering for the subsidiary.
Brazil-based Embraer manufactures business jets and regional airliners. “Eve’s innovative technology, combined with its manufacturing expertise and global servicing footprint through Embraer, comfort us in bringing a solution fitting the region’s complex requirements,” commented Ascent founder and CEO Lionel Sinai-Sinelnikoff. “With Ascent’s operating system onboarding Eve’s fleet and connected to Eve’s urban traffic management system, air operator partners will be empowered to elevate UAM operations at scale.”
Most of the services offered through Ascent’s flight booking platform are from half a dozen operators, including Inaec Aviation, SFS Aviation, and Advance Aviation. Much of its current capacity is based in the Philippines and Thailand, and it has been seeking to line up rotorcraft and fixed-wing charter operators in other countries.
Australia-based advanced air mobility ground infrastructure specialist Skyportz welcomed Eve's confirmation of plans to include Melbourne among early-adopter cities for the planned eVTOL aircraft services. "We are working with a number of air taxi designers who will be utilizing our sites," commented CEO Clem Newton-Brown, who chairs the advanced air mobility working group of the Australian Association of Unmanned Systems and is also on the federal government's new and emerging technologies advisory group. "Without the landing sites this new form of transport would be very limited. We have been working with property, freight, and logistics partners for some years and have a stable of sites ready to take the next step."
Newton-Brown describing the Embraer subsidiary as a "frontrunner" in the new sector. "There is still a lot of work to do in getting the community support for this new form of clean, green, and quiet transport," he concluded.
