As Volocopter prepares to launch commercial air taxi services with its two-seat VoloCity eVTOL aircraft at the Paris Olympics next year, the German startup has been showing off its 2X prototype in a series of flight demonstrations across the U.S. this fall as part of its efforts to expand into international markets.
The 2X prototype is a predecessor to Volocopter’s two-seat VoloCity air taxi, which is firmly on track to receive its type certificate from European air safety regulators in time for the 2024 Olympics Games, Volocopter's chief risk and certification officer Oliver Reinhardt told AIN. Attendees at the games should have the opportunity to be among the first paying passengers in an eVTOL aircraft. Meanwhile, the company is working to concurrently certify the vehicle with the FAA, and it has been flight testing in the U.S. to explore business opportunities across the pond, Reinhardt said.
For the latest stop in Volocopter’s U.S. roadshow, the company brought the 2X prototype to Las Vegas in mid-October for the annual NBAA-BACE business aviation show, where it conducted daily flight demonstrations for crowds of spectators at Henderson Executive Airport. This wasn’t Volocopter’s first rodeo in Vegas; the company brought an earlier prototype to the city in 2018 to fly on stage at the Consumer Electronics Show.
A couple of weeks before NBAA-BACE, the aircraft was in Dallas, Texas for the UP Summit, an exclusive invitation-only conference dedicated to advanced technologies in the transportation sector. According to Volocopter, the 2X prototype became not only the first eVTOL air taxi to fly at the annual event, but also the first to fly in the state of Texas.
Now Volocopter's 2X prototype has landed in Tampa, Florida, where the company conducts a public flight demonstration during an event on November 2 at the Sheltair Aviation FBO. It was attended by hundreds of federal, state, and local officials, as well as airport employees, media, and others. The flight tests were also visible to spectators around Tampa International Airport (KTPA).
Less conspicuous test trials at the airport continued through November 3, with the FAA using a bank of ground-based sensors on an apron adjacent to the Sheltair hangars to record noise data from the aircraft.
Notably, these flights also marked the first eVTOL trials in Florida, a fact that was not lost on the airport's CEO Joe Lopano, who pointed out that Tampa/St. Petersburg also lays claim to the first commercial passenger flight in the U.S.—an Airboat Line Benoist Type XIV flying boat piloted by Tony Janus flew from St. Pete to Tampa on Jan. 1, 1914. That 23-mile flight, Lopano explained, could soon be replicated by urban air mobility, which he called "the future of transportation."
“Tampa International Airport has always embraced innovation and futuristic planning, and we've already identified a potential site [at KTPA] for urban air mobility as a part of our master plan,” added Lopano.
While Volocopter’s U.S. roadshow is helping to educate the public about eVTOL air taxis and promote its aircraft, it has also provided the company with opportunities to test its aircraft in other localities with different geographies and possible use cases. In addition to Europe and the U.S., Volocopter is looking to operate its eVTOL aircraft all over the world, including in Japan, China, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia’s Neom region. Volocopter says it has already accumulated more than 500 pre-orders for its family of eVTOL aircraft, which includes the VoloCity as well as the larger, longer-range VoloRegion (formerly known as the VoloConnect) and cargo-carrying VoloDrone.
