V-Space (official site) is a startup that built Korea’s first UAM (Urban Air Transportation) destined to transport people or payloads of up to 120 Kg with their eVTOL all-electric vehicle. As its name indicates, it is a Vertical Take Off and Landing vehicle using a quad-copter design. It has a seat for one person and looks like a drone-like small helicopter.
eVTOL can fly over a 40-mile distance at a maximum speed of 60 Mph, a little bit below most U.S highway’s speed limits. Of course, the main advantage here is the lack of traffic jams, especially in an emergency.
However, the company has a hot new design called V Speeder-X, which looks a lot more modern and aerodynamic. The payload capacity is 230 Kg, but the speed has increased to 50 Mph as one of the use cases is to use the drone as an ambulance. Note that the flight time is relatively short, with about ~20 minutes.
When compared to competitors, like the Volocopter, the V Speeder-X is much more compact and requires a vertiport (heliport for drones) that is less than half the size, which means it could land in more places, or that more drones could be accommodated in the same landing area.
But what’s even more interesting is how price-competitive it looks on paper. At $0.09M ($90,000), the cost is comparable to that of a nice car. The next competitor (EHang) costs ~$300k, while the more expensive drones might reach $10M, but their capacity is higher.
V-Space even has the cheaper V Speeder (non-X) that could be sold for about $38,000 with a 120 Kg capacity but a maximum speed of 62 Mph.
The company has very ambitious plans for the next two years. It plans to use the CES 2024 event to meet global partners and wants to hold a flight demonstration at a major show in the first half of 2024. In the past, V_Space was present at events like the Dubai Airshow.
By mid-year, it would start global expansion by opening a global branch. In 2025, manufacturing will start to serve global markets, and production and sales will kick off in exactly two years. We don’t have the latest revenue figures, but for the year 2022, the company has generated $6M, according to a representative.
Beyond the flying vehicle and controls design, V-Space claims its proprietary battery design brings important competitive advantages such as a high Wh/Kg power density (higher than Tesla and Kona EVs). The power output of 40 C-rate is also impressive. Finally, V_Space says that its battery design makes it safer and that batteries won’t explode even if exposed to fire. So far, the battery business represents more than 50% of the total revenues.
Filed in . Read more about CES, CES 2024, Korea and Startups.
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