Volocopter and Southeast Asian ride-hailing firm Grab will jointly explore opportunities for urban air mobility in the region.
The study will look at Southeast Asian suitable cities, routes, use cases, and joint flight tests, says Volocopter.
The effort could evolve into further cooperation between the two companies.
“This cooperation is another important step towards the commercialisation of Urban Air Mobility in one of the most traffic congested regions of the world,” says Volocopter chief executive Florian Reuter.
“Together, we will learn from unprecedented insights into the economic and societal opportunity of launching our services on the hottest routes in the Southeast Asian market. This collaboration also offers the potential for a much larger cooperation which could eventually extend intermodal mobility to the skies.”
In October 2019, Volocopter conducted a two-minute flight with its Volocopter 2X prototype. The flight covered a distance of about 1.5km, and marked the last stage of tests to verify and validate Volocopter’s ability to fly over Singapore’s Marina Bay area.
The company also built a temporary “VoloPort” on a floating platform to illustrate the physical infrastructure that might be used by an urban air mobility operator.
