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Rome, Italy, 3 November 2021 – From Fiumicino’s Leonardo Da Vinci airport to the center of Rome, and vice versa, in just 20 minutes, and with zero emissions in flight. This is one of the main advantages of VoloCity, the innovative air taxi created by the German company Volocopter, which will be on display in Piazza San Silvestro, in the heart of Rome, from 2 to 4 November.
The new vehicle is scheduled to take-off within the next three years, which is the time it will take to finalize the related flight regulations and develop the vertiports that will enable the air taxis to take off and land vertically. Enac, Enav, and Aeroporti di Roma are working hard on these two fronts to ensure that Rome is one of the world's first major capitals where this new form of urban air mobility can be launched.
Here are the key features of VoloCity, which initially will be able to carry two people (one of whom will be the pilot until the aircraft will fly completely autonomous):
The air taxi can travel at a maximum speed of 110 km per hour and has a range of 35 km.
Once a flight has been completed, the lithium-ion batteries - installed in 9 units on board the aircraft - can be replaced within 5 minutes, allowing for a quick turnaround. This also increases the battery lifetime significantly, lowering the price of the flights and ensuring 100% healthy batteries with each flight.
The VoloCity has a maximum take-off weight of 900 kg, of which 700 kg is the empty weight of the vehicle and the remaining 200 kg is the payload (including passengers and luggage).
The air taxi is extremely safe, as it is fitted with 18 independent rotors powered by the same number of motors. Each rotor has a diameter of 2.3 m, and the overall diameter of the vehicle is 11.3 m.
The fully electric motors - BLDC (Brushless DC electric motor) type - enable an emission-free flight and a sustainable addition to existing transport modes.
Thanks to the efforts of Aeroporti di Roma and Volocopter, with the full support of their investment holding company, Atlantia (a shareholder in both companies), urban air mobility will soon be playing a major role in Rome.
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About Atlantia
Atlantia is a strategic investment holding company that manages motorway and airport infrastructures under concession and provides mobility services. The company mission is to make mobility more sustainable, safe, innovative and efficient, responding to society's latest needs. We want to create social, economic and environmental value by actively investing in innovative projects that make the travel experience unique and simplify people's everyday lives. Our commitment is at the heart of our strategy that sees sustainability as a new way of working, investing and managing our assets. Our impact is spread across 24 countries, encompassing more than 10,000 km of highways, 5 airports and other technology-driven services to make mobility simple and accessible, in a continuous quest for innovation.
About Aeroporti di Roma S.p.A.
Aeroporti di Roma, an Atlantia Group company, manages and develops the airports of Rome Fiumicino and Ciampino and carries out other activities associated with and supplementary to airport management. Fiumicino has two passenger terminals and is dedicated to business and leisure customers on national, international and intercontinental routes; Ciampino is mainly used by low-cost airlines, express couriers and General Aviation activities. In 2019, ADR recorded, as an airport system, 49.4 million passengers with over 240 destinations worldwide that can be reached from Rome, thanks to the approximately 100 airlines operating in the two airports (In 2020, following the effects induced by Covid-19 on air transport, Fiumicino airport recorded just 9.8 million passengers, whilst Ciampino airport closed the year with 1.6 million passengers). In 2020 the Airports Council International Europe awarded Leonardo da Vinci the "Best Airport Award 2020". For the third consecutive year, Leonardo da Vinci was confirmed first place out of the European hubs with over 40 million passengers. The award is added to the recognition of Airports Council International World which, in 2020, for the third consecutive year, awarded Leonardo da Vinci the "Airport Service Quality 2019" award as the most popular airport in Europe amongst the hubs with more than 40 million passengers. ADR's management capacity is also confirmed by the awards received in 2019 by Skytrax, the main international rating and assessment company in the airport sector, which confirmed the 4 Skytrax stars obtained by Fiumicino in 2017.
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About Volocopter
Volocopter is building the world’s first sustainable and scalable urban air mobility business to bring affordable air taxi services to megacities worldwide. With the VoloCity, the company is developing the first fully electric “eVTOL” aircraft in certification to transport passengers safely and quietly within cities. Volocopter leads and cooperates with partners in infrastructure, operations, and air traffic management to build the ecosystem necessary to ‘Bring Urban Air Mobility to Life’. In 2011, Volocopter performed the first-ever crewed flight of a purely electric multicopter and has since showcased numerous public flights with its full-scale aircraft. The most notable have been the public test flights at Singapore’s Marina Bay in October 2019 and the world’s first autonomous eVTOL flight in Dubai 2017. Volocopter is also developing products for the logistics space with their heavy-lift cargo variant, the VoloDrone. Founded in 2011 by Stephan Wolf and Alexander Zosel, Volocopter has 400 employees in offices in Bruchsal, Munich, and Singapore. The company has raised a total of €322 million in equity. Volocopter‘s investors include Daimler, Geely, DB Schenker, BlackRock, and Intel Capital amongst others.
Find out more at: www.volocopter.com