Aviation
Commercial /
Europe
closer future
Air mobility and air taxi startups receive record investments
Volocopter 2X
Spielvogel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Rafael Ramos
8/24/2021
It's not just big companies like Embraer that are investing heavily in their vertical take-off and landing trams (eVTOL). Smaller companies and startups are also investing heavily in the segment.
Investments made in companies that work with air mobility reach the amount of 4.3 billion dollars.
In addition, air taxi companies (not just eVTOLs, but drones as well) grew 83% in a short 5 years, reaching values ""of around 10.4 billion dollars. The fastest growing startups in this segment are in North America and Europe, such as Volocopter, Archer or Lilium, which recently announced the sale of 220 of its urban mobility vehicles to Brazilian Azul.
However, this area appears to have some challenges that are causing some concern for the future of the sector. "The enthusiasm we saw in the first quarter of the year has already calmed down a bit," Robin Riedel, of analyst firm McKinsey, tells the Financial Times.
Developments in the technical part of urban mobility vehicles seem to be being circumvented, however, the regulation part of these vehicles seems to be more difficult. How can this type of solution be certified to fly?
Patrick Ky, from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), believes that we will have this type of facility up and running in 2024 or 2025. He also said that cargo transportation by this means could be certified before passenger transport.
Despite this, the German company Volocopter intends to fly its eVTOLs in Singapore commercially as early as 2023.
eVTOL
Eve
image: Embraer
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Rafael Ramos
Aviation enthusiast from an early age, he had his first contacts with the area developing that good old habit of spending dozens of hours in front of the screens of Micrsoft Flight Simulator and other simulators. With a solid background in various technological areas, including engineering and chemistry, Rafael has rejoined aviation as editor and author of articles and materials on our portal, providing invaluable help to the dynamics and expansion of the website and the aeronautical community, bringing us the news and updates so indispensable for us to remain current in our area of operation.
   
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