German electric air taxi company Volocopter has filed for bankruptcy protection, the latest in a string of similar startups to hit financial turbulence. The company plans to keep operating while it searches for new investors.
“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 organize ourselves with internal restructuring,” CEO Dirk Hoke said in a statement.
Volocopter’s decision comes after it spent months teetering on the edge of falling apart. It also comes just one week after fellow German electric vertical takeoff and landing startup Lilium ceased operations — only to be apparently saved by a consortium of investors just one day later. (That deal is set to close in January.)
Volocopter is one of the more well-funded electric air taxi startups, having raised hundreds of millions of dollars over nearly a decade with backing from major automakers like Germany’s Mercedes-Benz and China’s Geely.
