NEW DELHI: Eve Air Mobility (EAM), founded by Brazilian aerospace major Embraer, has tied up with Gurugram-based Fly Blade India to bring its electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle (eVTOLs) or air taxis to the country within the next five years. The urban air mobility (UAM) player has signed upto 2 lakh flying hours annually with Fly Blade, that means it will deploy 200 air taxis with Blade that have a list price of $3 million apiece and each of them will fly for 1,000 hours every year here.
Incidentally, US mega carrier United had recently announced a $15-million investment in the NYSE-listed EAM and a conditional purchase agreement for hundreds of four-seater electric aircraft with deliveries expected to start in 2026. Eve Air Mobility co-CEO André Duarte Stein — who has worked in India for many years and knows the country well — told TOI Monday that the country is “most relevant for UAM” and deliveries here will be within weeks or months of when they enter into service in 2026.
“Initially our eVTOL will be piloted; with a seating capacity for four passengers and cargo space (a must for airport service). They will weigh about 2.5-3 tonnes (batteries will account for a quarter of this weight); have a maximum take off weight equivalent to a chopper and have a flying range of 100 km. Bengaluru alone has the potential of absorbing 300 eVTOLs for commute between the city centre and the airport and nearby places,” Stein said.
In the next stage, Eve will launch six-seater automated air taxis (with no pilot) after “taking learning experiences from the piloted ones and by which time passengers would have had the confidence to step into an unmanned eVTOL.”
Fly Blade India MD Amit Dutta said the next three years will be spent creating the ecosystem for launch of air taxis in India by creating the required “vertiports” (airports for eVTOLs) and air navigation systems for safe flying. This company is a JV with Blade US (that operates, among others, choppers between New York JFK Airport and downtown Manhattan) a minority stakeholder and Indian Hunch Ventures the majority owner.
“Our MoU with Eve Air Mobility has four pillars — getting eVTOLs for flying 2 lakh hours annually in India; exploring the possibility to have a final assembly unit for these eVTOLs here, joint collaboration on a pilot project in Bangalore connecting passengers from the airport to city destinations and creating the required ecosystem for this next revolution in the making that will transform lives like mobile phones and then internet did in the not so distant past. We expect Eve air taxis to start flying commercially by 2026 and India will be among the first countries to get them. The Indian government’s aim is to have simultaneous launches here when they enter into service,” Dutta said.
Eve’s piloted air taxi model will have eight propellers for vertical movement and two for flying horizontally, making it a “lift and cruise” aerial vehicle. “We are very proud to bring this service to India in 2026 or shortly thereafter and our groundwork for creating the infra will begin immediately,” Dutta, who heads the urban air mobility task force for CII, said.
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