‘Building a successful urban air mobility ecosystem requires collaboration across industries,’ said Eve Air Mobility’s CEO Johann Bordais.

Zurich-headquartered Hitachi Energy is partnering with air mobility company Eve to explore urban air transportation – loosely, flying cars.

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency expects Urban Air Mobility (UAM) to become a commercial reality in the bloc within three to five years, as a way to – among other things – address transportation challenges in densely populated areas.

This possibility is supported by new innovations areas including battery technologies and electric propulsion.

The two businesses, as part of a memorandum of understanding (MoU), have agreed to explore infrastructure challenges to ensure ‘vertiports’ – an imagined take-off and landing port for urban air vehicles – can be reliably connected to the power grid and be equipped to handle energy demands.

Hitachi will leverage its energy infrastructure, already widely deployed globally, while the Florida-based Eve, a manufacturer of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircrafts and other UAM products, will provide its complementary expertise to the project.

The companies will also assess requirements to enable vertiport operations, including power availability and high-power charging for eVTOL aircraft.

“Building a successful urban air mobility ecosystem requires collaboration across industries,” said Eve Air Mobility’s CEO Johann Bordais.

“As the sector moves toward commercial operations, it is increasingly important to understand how charging infrastructure, grid connectivity and vertiport energy requirements will be integrated into existing networks.”

The company said it holds around 2,700 letters of intent from prospective customers. It has been conducting flight tests since last December.

“With more than a century of innovation, we are addressing the most urgent energy challenge of our time, balancing soaring electricity demand while decarbonising the power system,” said Marco Berardi, the head of grid and power quality solutions and service, Hitachi Energy.

“We firmly believe that no single company or country can make the energy transition happen on its own, so we are thrilled to collaborate with Eve to jointly accelerate the decarbonization of urban air mobility.”

As per the MoU, the two businesses will also explore the potential to repurpose aircraft batteries for energy storage after their aviation lifecycle.

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