Volocopter flies in Florida for the first time - eVTOL style
Does the sunshine state love flying cars?
Volocopter is one that I haven’t really covered yet, and seeing this news about their flight in Florida kinda forced my hand to cover this historic news.
Tampa, Florida marks the spot of the first-ever flight test of an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft in an operational and large international airport in the U.S., and the first eVTOL test in the state of Florida. Huge news folks.
Volocopter GmbH, formerly known as E-Volo GmbH, is a German aviation company headquartered in Bruchsal, near Karlsruhe. The company was founded by Alexander Zosel and Stephan Wolf and specializes in the development of electric multirotor helicopters (eVTOLs as we call them now) designed for personal air transportation, particularly for air taxi services. The leadership team consists of CEO Dirk Hoke and Chairman Stefan Klocke.
A little history - the company first introduced technology demonstrators, the Volocopter VC1 and Volocopter VC2, which paved the way for their innovative air vehicles. The VC1 made its inaugural flight on October 21, 2011.
On September 9, 2019, Geely, the parent company of Volvo Cars, Terrafugia, and Lotus Cars, led a funding round that generated $55 million in private investments for Volocopter. This marked a significant milestone in securing financial support for the company's ventures.
Volocopter’s goal is to provide an additional layer of transportation that complements existing transit networks in megacities worldwide. They offer an innovative solution for navigating from point A to point B in congested urban areas.
These OG’s of UAM are set to introduce the world's first(citation needed!) eVTOL services, which include the VoloCity passenger electric air taxi, the VoloRegion long-range passenger aircraft, the VoloDrone heavy-lift cargo drone, and the accompanying physical and digital infrastructure that forms the complete ecosystem.
A lot of these eVTOL and flying car companies are after the same thing - becoming the Tesla of the flying car modern age - ushering in taxis and personal flying machines at first for the wealthy, and then trickling down to us ordinary folks. I’m hoping the trickle down part doesn’t take forever.