Volant Aviation has completed a Seed round of financing of tens of millions RMB, led by Shunwei Capital and followed by Ventech China RMB fund. The funding will be used to establish a professional engineering team, renovate the R&D lab building and purchase experimental equipment, test flight of scaled-down prototype, wind tunnel experiment and optimize product design.

Volant Aviation was founded in June 2021. It is dedicated to the development and production of passenger-carrying electric vertical takeoff and landing aircrafts (eVTOL). As a new type of short- and medium-range air transportation, eVTOL has the advantages of high safety, low noise and low price. eVTOL has a broad applications in public transportation, aerial sightseeing, offshore oil field transportation and other areas. With the rapid development of electric vehicles promoting the maturity of batteries, motors and other related technologies, eVTOL will also gradually come out from science fictions to reality.

Dong Ming, the founder and CEO of Volant, an expert in aviation systems and eVTOL, has been in business for more than 20 years. In his early years, he fully participated in the aircraft integration and engineering test flight of the ARJ21 at Rockwell Collins. Then, he led the development of C919’s core avionics system. In recent years, he has been focusing on the development of eVTOL systems. He has led the design of the earliest eVTOL cockpit and flight control avionics system in China, as well as the development and test flight of a 400 kg eVTOL aircraft.

At present, Volante has initially formed a professional and well-structured R&D and management team. Team members have been in the industry for 15 years on average, mainly from top aviation companies such as COMAC, AVIC, GE, and Airbus. They all have rich experience and deep understanding on their majors and the whole aviation system.

In terms of technical design, VOLANT chose the highest safety standard passenger-grade aircraft that is consistent with the eVTOL company in the United States and Europe as the entry point. The goal is to retain the system architecture gradually to all future autonomous decision-making.

(Pictured is Joby's rotary wing aircraft)

eVTOL industry in Europe and U.S. started up around 2014, and has given birth to a number of leading companies with advanced technologies and financing support, such as Joby, Lilium, Volocopter, etc. Among them, Joby has recently been listed on NASDAQ through SPAC, with a current market valuation of USD 6 billion. In China, the eVTOL industry is still in its infancy.

As a revolutionary new product, eVTOL is a young industry faces various challenges, like industry chain integration, airworthiness certification, etc,. However,  there is no doubt that it is a blue-ocean market with great potential. Ventech China believes that more excellent startups and entrepreneurs will join eVTOL industry in the coming years to accelerate the development of eVTOL industry in China.