Volocopter
VoloCity taking off into the night. Designed by Volocopter supported by Mercedes-Benz Design. Credit: © Volocopter.

German air taxi start-up Volocopter has launched the design for its new VoloCity Urban Air Mobility aircraft, which will be the company’s fourth-generation electrical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.

The aircraft is designed to meet the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA)’s SC-VTOL safety standards. It incorporates user feedback and test data from the previous Volocopter generations.

Designed to serve as an on-demand inner-city air taxi, VoloCity is said to have a calculated range of 35km at an airspeed of 110km/h.

Equipped with 18 rotors, the aircraft features redundancy in all critical systems.

Volocopter CEO Florian Reuter said: “The VoloCity is our most powerful Volocopter yet. It is rigorously designed to meet the demands of Urban Air Mobility and incorporates all requirements of the SC-VTOL certification standard established by EASA in July 2019.

“It is a result of all the insights we have gathered from our extensive testing programmes over the past years.”

The aircraft is equipped with a payload to accommodate two people, including hand luggage.

It features increased flight efficiency through aerodynamically shaped rotor beams and a newly introduced stabiliser to create enhanced stability in flight and additional lift.

In 2011, Volocopter launched the first manned flight of an eVTOL aircraft in the aviation industry.

The company will continue to test and improve its Urban Air Mobility vision with the current 2X pre-series model until the commissioning of VoloCity.

In April, the company signed an agreement with Honeywell to test and develop new navigation and automatic landing systems for its VTOL air taxis.

Last October, Volocopter conducted a series of test flights of its eVTOL air taxis in Singapore.