New Delhi:
India will soon join a select-few nations globally to start an on-road vertical take-off and landing air ambulance service across the country. An over $1 billion deal has been signed in this regard, according to which an IIT-Madras based electric aircraft startup – ePlane Company – will supply 788 air ambulances.
These 788 eVTOL or Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing air ambulances will be delivered to ICATT – India’s leading air ambulance firm, which will then deploy these aircraft across every district in India.
The deal – a non-binding agreement- assumes significance as Indian cities and towns grapple with ever-increasing vehicular traffic. eVTOLs will begin by providing essential services like facilitating medical emergencies. Being electric vehicles, they will also ensure that the environment is not adversely affected.
India’s eVTOL market has gained a lot of attention in recent years with the government also looking to ease airspace to a limited extent to facilitate transportation and delivery services by eVTOLs and drones respectively.
Some of the leading startups of eVTOL aircraft in India include Archer Aviation, Sarla Aviation, and ePlane Company. App-based taxi service firms like Uber are also developing and testing prototypes to begin air taxi services, which will give big city commuters a chance to avoid traffic snarls.
For essential services like air ambulances, ePlane Company is aiming to begin operations by the last quarter of 2026. The firm will have a production capability of 100 units per year, said its founder Satya Chakravarthy, in an interview to news agency Reuters.
Mr Chakravarthy is a professor at IIT-Madras – which is where his startup ePlane Company was incubated. While his billion-dollar deal for air ambulances is done, he is seeking another $100 million to manufacture and test prototypes of other types of eVTOL aircraft and get its required certification. So far, the firm has raised $20 million from investors.
ePlane Company is working on three different prototypes of air ambulances based on the requirement in different geographies and population density. These aircraft will accommodate a pilot, a paramedic, a patient, and a stretcher, along with essential life-saving medical devices and medical kits. The air ambulances will have a top speed of 200 kmph and a range of between 110 kilometers and 200 kilometers per battery charge.
“We can ramp up our production and put things into the market to good use much more effectively with an air ambulance than directly going to an air taxi,” Mr Chakravarthy said, adding that “It’s possible for us to ramp up air ambulances a lot more organically, compared to having to go to a rush with an air taxi.”
(Inputs from Reuters)