Air taxi maker Volocopter scrambles for additional eVTOL financing

Efforts to launch air taxi activities are really heating up for Volocopter, but not in a way Europe’s leading electric takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft developer would like: a struggle to secure additional funding to complete certification and manufacturing of its craft.

Volocopter’s scramble to find late-startup finances kicked into high gear after a deal the air taxi developer thought it had secured with authorities in its domestic German market fell through in late April. Under that agreement, Germany’s central government would have provided the eVTOL maker with €50 million ($53 million), which the state of Bavaria was poised to match.

No explicit reason was given for the according failing to be finalized, and a similar agreement also ultimately escaped rival German air taxi developer Lilium’s grasp. But loss of the $107 million in additional financing was an obvious disappointment – and annoyance – to Volocopter. 

In comments to German media, company CEO Dirk Hoke even evoked the possibility of “filing for insolvency in the foreseeable future” should the firm not be able to find new investors. The prospect is presumably a large dose of hyperbole issued as leverage to seek additional aid, since the company later told FlightGlobal the financial poison pill threat was “not imminent (n)or time-pressured.”

That latter qualification may be a relative concern, however, given the ticking clock of Volocopter’s plans to obtain eVTOL certification and launch production in 2025. It’s also clear the company is burning lots of money in developing its air taxis. Back in late 2022 when it secured $182 million in new backing, it said those funds were expected to take it through the authorization process.

Though it was recently given the green light for some serial production procedures, Volocopter’s plans to initiate passenger air taxi activity during the Summer Olympics in Paris later this year have been downgraded to largely demonstration flights, due to lack of required certification. 

Doubts about just how smoothly those eVTOLs will fly into commercial operation may have also caused federal and Bavarian agencies to reconsider providing further funding. That refusal came after authorities in the company’s home Baden-Wuerttemberg state decided earlier against putting more money into the startup as possibly too risky.