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Volocopter over Stuttgart (archive picture): Free flight instead of waiting in a traffic jam?
Photo: Christoph Schmidt / DPA
The flight taxi start-up Volocopter receives a hefty injection of funds: In a new financing round, the company from Bruchsal near Karlsruhe has collected a total of 200 million euros from investors.
With the money, the approval of the electric air taxi for cities called "VoloCity" should be accelerated, so the company.
"Thanks to our partnerships, we can fall back on the necessary expertise to open the first routes in the next few years," said company boss Florian Reuter.
Information on the company evaluation was not given.
The air taxi developer Lilium from Munich is now valued at more than one billion dollars.
So far, Volocopter has been financed with a total of 122 million euros.
All existing investors, including the logistics subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn, Intel, Daimler and Geely, took part in the new financing round.
New on board are the automotive supplier Continental, the asset manager BlackRock and the Italian infrastructure operator Atlantia.
Like its German competitor Lilium, Volocopter is developing electrically powered air taxis with which passengers can avoid traffic jams and reach their destination quickly.
The ten-year-old company is considered a pioneer and plans to operate the first commercial air taxi routes within the next two years.
The Volocopter engineers are also working on a logistics drone.
Costly competition
Companies around the world are now in a costly race for the first commercial air taxi offer.
In addition to Volocopter, Joby and Lilium, well-known names such as Airbus and Volkswagen compete with each other.
In the meantime, the European aviation safety authority EASA also considers the use of drones and air taxis to be realistic by the middle of the decade.
The analysts at Morgan Stanley rate the potential as huge.
According to this, the market for electronic air taxis, which deliver goods and transport passengers, could be worth more than $ 1.5 trillion in 2040.
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mic / Reuters