Volocopter’s evtol made its first live flight near Paris in November, and it is hoped that it will be able to carry passengers commercially over shorter distances in 2024, the year of the Paris Olympics.
These air taxis have already completed their test flights and are likely to open up air taxi travel in the coming years.
VoloCity takes passengers around the city, first in Paris and then around the world. Volocopter’s eVTOL for passenger transport, VoloCity, is one of the company’s aircraft being developed to reform air transport, alongside the VoloDrone for parcel transport, the VoloConnect for longer distances and the VoloIQ, the infrastructure underpinning the VoloCity, which will serve as the system’s brain.
Germany’s Volocopter and Saudi Arabia’s NEOM have also set up a joint venture for the project. For some time now, Saudi Arabia has been at the forefront of the world’s megaprojects: the Middle East country has built the world’s tallest clock tower – the world’s third tallest – the Abraj al-Bayt in Mecca, and is also building the monumental Jeddah Tower, which will be the world’s tallest building when completed, at over a kilometre tall.
The VoloDrone is the name of a German-developed logistics machine, powered purely by electricity, that is expected to change the way people around the world think about parcel delivery in big cities and expand the use of drones. The unmanned automated giant helicopter has successfully completed another test.
South Korea is ramping up preparations for drone passenger transport, with plans to launch an air taxi service by 2026 and autonomous urban air mobility (UAM) operations by the next decade.