German eVTOL developer Volocopter goes bankrupt
Volocopter announced in a short press release that it had filed an application for the opening of insolvency proceedings with the Karlsruhe Local Court on 26 December 2024. It was approved the following day, and Tobias Wahl was appointed insolvency administrator. Business operations will continue during the proceedings and, according to Volocopter, the aim is to “develop a restructuring concept by the end of February and implement it with investors.” The insolvency administrator has already initiated a so-called investor process: “The company needs financing to take the final steps towards market entry,” says Tobias Wahl.
Volocopter was founded in Bruchsal in 2011 and develops all-electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. Like several companies in this future-oriented sector, Volocopter is about to obtain type certification and launch its urban eVTOL called VoloCity. However, Volocopter required a great deal of capital for its development. In the end, investors made themselves scarce: “Despite recent intensive fundraising efforts, finding a viable solution to maintain regular operations outside of insolvency proceedings has not been possible,” the company writes. However, “with one of the lowest burn rates in the industry, Volocopter has successfully operated in an extremely difficult financial environment.”
Dirk Hoke, CEO of Volocopter, thus considers his insolvent company to be lucrative: “We are ahead of our industry peers in our technological, flight test, and certification progress. That makes us an attractive company to invest in while we organise ourselves with internal restructuring.” There are also plans to launch the VoloCity on the market in 2025.
One potential interested party in the German air taxi developer could come from China: As early as mid-November, Bloomberg reported, citing insiders, that the car company Geely was looking into acquiring Volocopter. Geely is said to be prepared to buy around 85 per cent of the shares in Volocopter. The family office of Gerhard Sturm, the founder of fan manufacturer EBM-Papst, is also said to be involved in the potential deal. However, this information has not yet been officially confirmed.
It is hardly surprising that these takeover rumours emerged back in November, as Volocopter recently suffered several setbacks. For example, the company initially wanted to offer commercial operations with the VoloCity for the first time last summer during the Olympic Games in Paris, but the project failed for various reasons. In the end, Volocopter was only able to complete one manned demonstration flight in a Paris suburb, using the ten-year-old predecessor model 2X instead of the current model.
CEO Dirk Hoke had already openly warned of Volocopter’s insolvency in the spring and insisted on a state guarantee, which, however, failed to materialise, as was recently the case with Munich-based competitor Lilium. While Lilium then filed for insolvency and was saved from liquidation at the last minute on 24 December by a deal with the investor consortium Mobile Uplift Corporation, Volocopter has since received another injection of funds from its previous investors. But this last capital has also been used up.
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