The search for a new boss is over. The air taxi startup Volocopter, which has come under pressure, hires Dirk Hoke (52). The former head of the armaments and space division of airbus will take over the management post from long-time boss Florian Reuter (42) in September, the company announced on Tuesday. The manager magazin already reported in December about the Looking for a new boss reported.
The experienced manager Hoke – like Reuter once at Siemens – should now, above all, successfully complete the certification process for electric air taxis. “Our challenge is to press ahead with the certification of the VoloCity with the approval authorities early enough so that they can carry out all the necessary validations,” Hoke told Reuters news agency. “It will be an incredibly exciting, but also difficult time.”
Volocopter is pursuing an ambitious schedule and has set itself the goal of having an approved machine by 2024. Chief Commercial Officer Christian Bauer (41), who was appointed co-managing director in October, has been luring investors for months with promises that mass production will run from 2025 with more than 10,000 units per year; sales will reach more than nine billion dollars in 2029. “We are invincible,” booms the documents.
Companies around the world are currently fighting a costly race for the first air taxi. So far, such means of transport have not been approved anywhere in the world – and the euphoria that prevailed at the beginning of last year has evaporated. Volocopter’s competitors include, among others the German start-up Lilium or the US company Joby Aviation, which went public in 2021 via Spac, but are under a lot of pressure there. Lilium’s shares have since fallen nearly 70 percent, and Joby’s by around 50 percent.
The business is capital intensive. In order to be able to financially shoulder the certification process and the associated construction of production facilities, Volocopter is currently in a round of financing. Just last week, the company from Bruchsal, which is now valued at 1.5 billion euros, made it public that it had collected a further 153 million euros from investors. Significantly less than the half billion targeted by the company. “There are still a few investors who want to help us to ultimately reach 500 million euros,” said the chairman of the Volocopter Advisory Board, Stefan Klocke (51).
IPO 2024 with Olympic pictures
The planned Spac IPO, which should bring Volocopter $800 million in cash, was in late 2021 canceled at the last moment been. “Like everyone else, we had also looked at Spacs as a financing option. That only fell through at the last minute – fortunately. Spac did not bring in the desired money from many competitors,” said Klocke now. Volocopter is still aiming for the trading floor – just a little later: “We want to go public with the pictures from the Summer Olympics in Paris,” Klocke said 2024 was the goal.
Since it was founded in 2011, Volocopter has had investors – including Deutsche Bahn, intel and Mercedes-Benz – collected more than 495 million euros. The investors also include the start-up entrepreneur Lukasz Gadowski (44) and the former Mercedes-Benz boss Dieter Zetsche (68), both of whom are also on the advisory board. “If that works, it’s a new world,” he says. “I would like to make a contribution to this – in terms of noise pollution and emissions.”