The insolvent air taxi start-up Volocopter has apparently found an investor. The saviour is said to come in the form of an Austrian aircraft manufacturer with Chinese ownership. However, the deal has not yet been officially confirmed.
According to the German business publication Wirtschaftswoche, the Austrian aircraft manufacturer Diamond Aircraft is taking over the insolvent company from Bruchsal. Diamond is owned by the Chinese automotive supplier Wanfeng. According to the report, the Austrian company primarily does business with motorised gliders and small aircraft for the private market but also has ambitions in the electric aviation sector. Volvocopter itself only officially confirmed that it is still in talks with investors.
However, Wirtschaftswoche has learnt from people close to the company that a deal has been agreed with Diamond. The amount of the sale is not yet known, but the new owner intends to reduce the Volocopter team from around 500 to around 160 employees. On Monday, the insolvent flying taxi developer had already given notice to all employees whose employment contracts expire at the end of June. There could now be a future for a third of the workforce after all.
Volocopter filed for insolvency on Boxing Day. After Lilium, this was the second German electric flying taxi startup to become insolvent. Since December, the provisional insolvency administrator, Tobias Wahl, has been working on a reorganisation solution. However, business operations continued, and Volocopter announced its intention to “develop a reorganisation concept and implement it with investors” by the end of February. “The company needs financing in order to take the final steps towards market entry,” commented lawyer Tobias Wahl. However, no solution had apparently been found by the beginning of March, so the provisional insolvency turned into regular insolvency proceedings on 3 March, followed by the notice of termination.
As for Volocopter itself, the company was founded in Bruchsal in 2011 and develops battery-electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles (eVTOLs). Like several companies in this future-oriented sector, Volocopter is close to obtaining type certification and launching its urban eVTOL called VoloCity. However, Volocopter requires a great deal of capital for this development. And in the end, investors became scarce. However, an agreement signed in February with the French company Jet Systems Hélicoptères Services shows that Volocopter is not giving up. Both parties have signed an agreement to bring services for electric vertical take-off aircraft to France.
Now, there is to be a future under the Diamond corporate umbrella. According to Wirtschaftswoche, the company employs around 600 people and has a site in Egelsbach, Hesse, among other locations. It is also known that Wanfeng Aviation Industry joined Diamond in 2017 after many years of crisis, and, according to the report, the management was also filled with managers from the company’s own ranks.
Diamond has been driving forward its own electric agenda for some time under Chinese influence: in August 2023, the company announced the maiden flight of its all-electric eDA40 training aircraft at the company’s headquarters in Wiener Neustadt. According to information provided at the time, the flight included system tests, all basic manoeuvres and an initial performance evaluation.
The two-seater model is to be launched as an electric aircraft with DC fast charging and will be equipped with the Engineus 100 electric motor from French supplier Safran, which delivers a maximum take-off power of 130 kW. The battery system is supplied by Electric Power Systems (EPS).
wiwo.de (in German)
