Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Four companies have signed an agreement to construct what might become the first permanent eVTOL vertiport in Japan.
Three Japanese firms are part of the alliance–Park24, Kanematsu Corporation, and Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance Company–as well as the United Kingdom-based Skyports.
The agreement calls for the construction of a vertiport in a corner of an existing parking lot owned by Park24 in the Kansai region. The plan is to open the vertiport in 2025, when it will connect with the 2025 World Expo on the manmade island of Yumeshima.
Park24 plans to supplement eVTOL operations with a car-sharing service that will operate from the same parking lot, helping to bring passengers to and from the air taxi service.
If all goes well during the World Expo, the partners would then gradually expand their services, with their eye already focused on possible routes between Narita International Airport and central Tokyo.
It is not clear how this new partnership intersects with the alliance announced in February between Kanematsu, Skyports, Japan Airlines (JAL), and Brazil-based Eve Air Mobility, but it does seem possible that these are related initiatives, since one appears to be mainly engaged in vertiport construction and the other on an air taxi service, though the division of labor has yet to be clarified.
The emerging web of eVTOL partnerships suggests that there may be several rival air taxi services operating in Japan in 2025–the one outlined above; another linking All Nippon Airways (ANA), Joby Aviation, and Toyota; and perhaps a third centered on SkyDrive and its partners.
This event is the first international exhibition and conference for new advanced air mobility industry market in Japan and in global market. It features the most updated information of AAM market from Japan and from all over the world.
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Once celebrated as pioneers of gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles, a new report finds that major Japanese automakers such as Nissan, Toyota, and Honda are poised to capture only a meager share of the global Electric Vehicle (EV) market.
Japan currently dominates the world market for hybrid vehicles, but as automobile companies in China, the United States, and Europe push towards fully electric fleets, Japanese automakers have proven reluctant to embrace the change.
This fact has once again been highlighted once in a report issued earlier this month by the independent think tank InfluenceMap, which found Japanese brands pulling up dead last among major global automakers.
This wasn’t always the case. In fact, Nissan was the first automobile company to mass produce a battery-powered vehicle–the Nissan Leaf–which debuted in 2010. The Leaf was popular at the time and continues to be one of the best-selling EVs, unseated only recently by the popularity of the Tesla Model 3.
In past years, Nissan, Toyota, and Honda have downplayed the importance of EVs. Indeed, Toyota in particular continues to promote hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCEVs) as an EV alternative, and the government has set a target of 200,000 FCEVs on the road by 2025.
However, according to the InfluenceMap report, only 8,000 FCEVs are likely to be produced by 2029.
Despite Japan’s advocacy, FCEVs face many challenges to wide adoption, not least of which is the need for a national-scale hydrogen refueling infrastructure, which most nations are preparing.
Few others share Japan’s doubts that EVs may not be the vehicles of the future.
China and Europe are even mandating higher sales of fully electric vehicles and moving to ban sales of most gasoline-powered cars and trucks. Jurisdictions such as California and the United Kingdom already have plans to ban hybrid vehicles as well.
Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association Chairman Akio Toyoda, also the president of Toyota Motor, has repeatedly expressed skepticism about the feasibility of fully electric vehicles, a stance which puts him at odds with the mainstream of global industry opinion. Toyoda argues that the media has oversold the environmental value of EVs, noting correctly that the climate-protection benefits of EVs are compromised if fossil fuels are used to generate electricity for the national grids.
There are other reasons why Japanese automakers are hesitant to let go of hybrid technology.
According to James Edmondson, an analyst at IDTechEx, a market research firm, “For the manufacturers like Toyota, like Nissan, the hybrids are so prolific, there’s a good business case for them, so it’s in the interest of the government to keep pushing for them.”
Among Toyoda’s specific concerns are preserving the technological lead that Toyota has established in systematizing hybrid production, as well as protecting the many small- and medium-sized Japanese firms which currently act as Toyota suppliers. Many of these companies will not be needed once the less-complex EV technology is adopted.
While the instinct to protect jobs is admirable in principle, if these short-term benefits come only at the expense of further damaging the global climate and sinking the nation’s automotive industry into obsolescence, the benefit will have come at far too high a cost.
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Aichi Prefecture-based automotive components manufacturer Denso, along with its US aerospace industry partner Honeywell, are working with prominent German eVTOL company Lilium to co-develop and manufacture the electric motors that will power the Lilium Jet.
Koji Ishizuka, Denso’s senior director of the Electric Sora-Mobi Business Promotion Department, explained: “Denso’s focus is powering the shift to a green, safe and seamless mobility future for all. We’re grateful to work with Honeywell and Lilium on making air travel cleaner and more efficient, and in doing so, we have the opportunity to apply our electrification expertise to vehicles on land and in the sky.”
Lilium is regarded as one of the most advanced eVTOL developers. It is working on its Lilium Jet which will have a flexible cabin architecture that can be configured to a luxury four-passenger cabin, a six-passenger shuttle cabin, or a cargo cabin.
According to Lilium, the electric motor that Denso and Honeywell are co-developing is “a proprietary, high-performance system” with an air-cooled design which will produce no carbon emissions during operation.
Lilium’s statement explains that “the e-motor has its rotor and stator in a centrifugal or ‘radial’ configuration, compared to traditional axial designs. This lowers the component’s weight, manufacturing costs, and susceptibility to foreign object damage. It also boasts industry-leading power density, with the first prototypes designed to extract over 100KW of power from a system weighing just over four kilograms.”
The Lilium Jet design is noted for its thirty ducted fan motors mounted on its wings and canards.
In his own comments, Lilium CEO Yves Yemsi said that his firm is delighted to partner with Denso and Honeywell on electric engine development, adding, “the collaboration with these two powerhouses takes us further along the path to revolutionizing regional air mobility.”
This event is the first international exhibition and conference for new advanced air mobility industry market in Japan and in global market. It features the most updated information of AAM market from Japan and from all over the world.
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Japan’s commitment to a carbon neutral society by 2050 may be aided by the development of ammonia co-firing. As an energy-efficient carrier of hydrogen, and with successful co-firing tests already completed, the technology appears promising.
In 2017, the world’s first test of coal power generation with ammonia co-firing was conducted at the Chugoku Electric Power Company’s Mizushima Power Station.
The issue with coal-fired power generation is its production of carbon dioxide. Mixing carbon-free fuel with pulverized coal at already existing coal-fired boilers is a cost-effective means to reduce carbon emissions while maintaining stable power generation.
A subsequent test at the IHI Aioi Works in Hyogo Prefecture demonstrated stable combustion of ammonia and pulverized coal at a 20% co-firing rate. This was found to create a corresponding 20% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.
JERA is also investigating the possibility of utilizing a 50% ammonia mix.
The main drawback of this technology is the possibility for an increased concentration of nitrous oxides (NOx) in the flue gas. NOx is the main constituent in the formation of ground-level ozone, which may result in respiratory problems. Moreover, NOx in combination with sulfur oxides contributes to acid rain, and it can also create a greenhouse gas under certain conditions.
Fortunately, the tests performed at the IHI Aioi Works showed no increase in the output of NOx at a 20% ammonia co-firing rate when using two-staged combustion.
The results of these tests appear to indicate that existing coal-fired generators in Japan can be modified to use ammonia as a combustible fuel without having to install additional facilities.
The use of ammonia as a fuel would also take advantage of existing ammonia transportation and storage infrastructure at power plants.
Globally, ammonia is already a mass produced inorganic chemical due to the role it serves as a fertilizer for agriculture. Utilizing ammonia as a fuel would therefore involve only the expansion of an already robust supply chain.
As Prakash Sharma, vice president of multi-commodity research at Wood Mackenzie, puts it, ammonia “can leverage existing infrastructure and can be used directly in power generation and as a shipping fuel.”
On the other hand, ammonia production itself can be a stumbling block towards carbon neutrality goals.
Large-scale ammonia production usually employs the Haber-Bosch process, which requires the use of large amounts of natural gas. Consequently, ammonia production of this kind releases significant quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and it is therefore known as “brown ammonia.”
But if the carbon dioxide is later returned to the ground through carbon capture and storage, then it becomes known as “blue ammonia.”
Japan is currently seeking to invest in companies that may be able to provide blue ammonia, but is also developing a third technology of this kind–green ammonia.
Green ammonia does not rely on natural gas as a feedstock for hydrogen. In this process, hydrogen is obtained through electrolysis of water, powered entirely by renewable energy sources.
In 2018, at its pilot plant in Koriyama city, Fukushima Prefecture, JCG Holdings demonstrated both the production of green ammonia as well as the generation of electricity using gas turbines fueled only by synthesized ammonia.
Ammonia fuel could become a cost-effective means to advance Japan towards its carbon neutrality objectives. As an early step, the Japanese government is seeking to phase out inefficient coal plants and looking to co-fire ammonia at a 20% rate in its remaining plants.
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — At no point has the Japanese general public supported the legalization of casino gambling, and even now opposition to the unpopular initiative is unrelenting.
Two local governments, Osaka and Nagasaki, submitted at the end of April licensing applications for their Integrated Resort (IR) plans, and as these projects have come closer to realization, opponents of casino gambling appear to be stepping up their activities, sensing that this might be the last chance to head off these developments.
While the mainstream news media often takes a pro-business stance, in this case they have been unremittingly critical.
There are various factors that contribute to this stand. First, they are simply reflecting the broader views of the Japanese public. Second, the casino companies are not yet spending a lot of money on advertising, which might otherwise have compromised the newspapers’ editorial positions. Finally, foreign companies will play central roles in the early stages of IR development, and the system has always been highly allergic to foreigners exercising significant influence within Japanese society.
In this context, it’s worth noting that all of the potential IR operators backed by Chinese money were pushed out in the final round. But even the North American and European consortiums will be met with suspicion.
The Nishi-Nippon Shinbun, the leading local newspaper of the Kyushu region, once again published an editorial expressing its doubts:
The number of tourists from overseas, who are supposed to become the main customers, has decreased sharply, and the use of online casinos and international conferences has taken root. The premise of establishing businesses that build large-scale facilities and attracts customers from home and abroad is breaking down. Nonetheless, the national government has stipulated conditions for building huge hotels and international conference halls, and the two plans submitted for licensing have been prepared accordingly. Many people may wonder if this is a business that truly suits the times.
The editors of the Nishi-Nippon Shinbun are hardly alone in arguing that the national IR promotion policy may already be outdated, and that if these projects go forward and open their doors later in the 2020s, there’s a strong chance they will fail to deliver on their golden promises.
For example, Shizuoka University Professor Yoichi Torihata told the Mainichi Shinbun this week that “the world where wealthy people gather from all over the world to play at casinos has disappeared.”
While that may be overstated, there is indeed plenty of reason to doubt that mainland Chinese VIPs will be spending huge sums in the prospective Japanese IRs, especially as the clouds overhanging regional diplomatic relations have darkened and Beijing has become less tolerant of the gambling industry as a whole.
In Osaka, where the strongest IR initiative is found, the opposition Liberal Democratic Party has decided to hammer at the credentials of the ruling Osaka Restoration Association by submitting a draft ordinance to combat gambling addiction, presenting themselves as the guardians of the public welfare.
This comes amidst a national controversy regarding a young man in Yamaguchi Prefecture who claimed to have quickly lost via online gambling hundreds of thousands of dollars mistakenly sent to him as Covid relief funds by his local town office. Some commentators have seized on this incident as providing yet another example of the iniquities of gambling.
In these various ways, IR opponents continue to chip away at the legitimacy of an already shaky, vulnerable effort to build casino resorts in Japan.
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Japan eVTOL-maker SkyDrive is giving a boost to its drone division with two new initiatives intended to popularize its offering.
Aside from the one-seat eVTOL SD-03 for which it is best known, SkyDrive has also produced a heavy-lift drone model it calls SkyLift.
The main feature of this logistics drone is that it is designed to carry loads of up to 30 kilograms in mountainous locations. The drone includes a hoist function that allows it to be unloaded on rough territory without needing to land.
The company explains that sales of SkyLift have been constrained by the fact that some potential clients are hesitant to purchase an aircraft which they are not sure they can operate effectively, safely, and legally.
Therefore, as a new initiative, the company is offering a program it calls SkyLift Plus by which SkyDrive will deploy its own staff to survey and plan flights, operate the drone on behalf of clients, and arrange for the necessary official permissions. Moreover, their intention is to teach the clients to gain these skills for themselves, so after a while they are no longer dependent on SkyDrive to handle these drone missions.
By easing the concerns of inexperienced clients, SkyDrive hopes that it can make additional sales of its SkyLift drone.
Additionally, as a promotional measure, SkyDrive has hired alpinist Ken Noguchi as its “SkyLift Ambassador.” In keeping with its theme of using the heavy-lift drone to help clients scale logistical challenges in the Japanese highlands, this well-known mountaineer will be featured in its advertising campaigns.
It started in 2016 co-organized by Japan UAS Industrial Development Association (JUIDA) and Congrès, Inc. It has become the biggest exhibition and conference in drone industry gathering over 10,000 visitors every year.
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Chemical manufacturing company Taiyo Holdings announced that a new 2.3MW floating solar photovoltaic farm has been switched on in Miki city, Hyogo Prefecture.
The Chuoike Floating Solar Power Plant is company’s fourteen project of the kind, spread across the seven prefectures of Aichi, Gifu, Hyogo, Kagawa, Mie, Nara, and Saitama. All of them have been completed since October 2015.
The combined capacity of the company’s floating solar projects is close to 20MW.
In its statement, the firm explained that “it is generally the case that solar panels generate less power as the temperature rises, but with floating solar the cooling effect of the water moderates such temperature rises. This is an advantage of floating solar as compared to land-mounted solar panels.”
The Chuoike plant entered full operations on May 13.
Taiyo Holdings established Taiyo Green Energy as a subsidiary in 2014 to build out and operate its solar business.
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Major real estate developer Mitsui Fudosan is deepening its support for Japan’s startup community, announcing that it is expanding its workspace offering to a seventh location near Tokyo Station.
The new location, which will be called The E.A.S.T. Nihonbashi 1-Chome, is scheduled to open on July 1. Like the six existing locations, it is within walking distance of Tokyo Station, as well as the Ginza district. This new location will be located on the fifth floor of a building which is directly connected to Nihonbashi Station.
Mitsui originally launched its “co-creation project” 31Ventures in 2015 in order to become directly involved in promoting and sometimes partnering with Japanese startups. This has included facilitating meetings between innovative firms and offering funding to those startups which the company regards as the most promising.
The flagship workspace is The E.A.S.T. Nihonbashi Tomizawacho, which opened in April last year.
The seventh location at Nihonbashi 1-Chome–which like its predecessors is aimed at “adult entrepreneurs”–will feature shared spaces, private offices, two meeting rooms, and five “web booths.” The latter two features are operated under an hourly pay-as-you-go system.
Prospective tenants will be screened in an attempt to ensure that only promising ventures are allowed to enter.
The name The E.A.S.T. refers to the east side of Tokyo Station, where Mitsui Fudosan owns a great deal of property.
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — The announcement by Subaru that it will be building Japan’s first dedicated Electric Vehicle (EV) factory cannot disguise the fact that this nation is already far behind in an industrial race which it should be leading.
Also part of Subaru’s announcement is that it will invest a total of ¥250 billion (US$1.9 billion) over five years in EV production, with the aim of having 40% of its new global car sales be electric by 2030.
The automaker’s flagship EV effort appears set to be the Solterra model, an all-electric SUV developed in cooperation with Toyota Motor Corporation.
The EV penetration rate is a mere 1% in Japan, and in recent years it is barely growing at all.
Meanwhile, in China, about 3.4 million EVs were sold last year, and by December 2021 they were accounting for about 20% of all new car sales.
The top five EV automakers by global sales in 2021 were Tesla, Volkswagen, BYD, General Motors, and Stellantis–in other words, not a single one is a Japanese company.
This is quite a fall from grace for a nation that has been known for decades as an automotive powerhouse, and which itself led the hybrid revolution a short decade or two ago.
Rather than anticipating the direction of a global automotive market that it used to lead, Japanese industrial leaders, led by Toyota President Akio Toyoda, stubbornly refused for many years to accept that the EV era was arriving, and now they find themselves playing catch-up.
It remains to be seen if they still have the time and resources to return the forefront of global auto-making, or if the sun is setting on this vital dimension of Japanese industrial leadership as well.
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Joby Aviation Founder and Chief Executive Officer JoeBen Bevirt used an earnings call on May 12 to confirm his company’s general strategy with regard to the Japanese market.
“Our approach is a little bit different than some of the other folks. We want to not only build the aircraft, but also operate the aircraft and deliver that service kind of more directly to end customers,” he explained.
He added that due to the tie-up with All Nippon Airways (ANA), he feels that Joby has “the right partners to help support what those launches might look like.”
The Joby-ANA alliance was unveiled in mid-February with the declaration that they would “bring aerial ridesharing services to cities and communities across Japan.”
The partners added that this service would likely be integrated with a ground transportation service with support from Toyota Motor Corporation.
Toyota is the top investor in Joby Aviation, to the tune of about US$400 million.
Joby Aviation’s financial report for the first quarter of 2022 was generally welcomed by the market. Since the firm is, like all eVTOL companies, not at the point at which it can sell aircraft or offer its core services, from a financial point of view it is a matter of comparing the money raised by backers with the money spent on development costs and related expenses.
In Joby’s case, it spent US$72 million in the January-March period and says that it expects full year cash expenditure of between US$340 million and US$360 million.
This event is the first international exhibition and conference for new advanced air mobility industry market in Japan and in global market. It features the most updated information of AAM market from Japan and from all over the world.
SNA Travel (Tokyo) — Representatives of Japan’s tourism industry are stepping up pressure on the Kishida administration to accelerate the country’s reopening to foreign visitors.
“We believe the weaker yen will help the tourism industry, and we see this as a business tailwind. This should be a great opportunity for the government to bring tourists back to Japan,” Japan Association of Travel Agents Chairman Hiroyuki Takahashi said this week.
Other organizations lobbying the government for opening the borders include the Japan Hotel Association, as well as major airlines and railway companies.
A formal request from these business groups was submitted to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, specifically asking that the daily cap on entrants to Japan be abolished.
At present, the Kishida government has decided to raise the entry cap from 10,000 to 20,000 people per day beginning in June, but it still intends to maintain the controls.
Other nations in the Asia-Pacific, including those that had imposed strict national isolation policies in 2020 and 2021, have been announcing drastic relaxations or the abolishment of such policies one after another, making Japan increasingly an outlier.
Tourist industry-affiliated lawmakers within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party are also applying pressure. One such parliamentary group issued a resolution observing, “If Japan is the only nation which continues to take strict measures, then we may be left behind from the rest of the world.”
The lawmakers want the daily cap on visitors lifted, as well as simplified Covid testing and quarantine procedures.
As for the general public, the latest poll by Japan News Network finds that 48% of Japanese believe that border controls should now be eased, while 38% want the strict entry policies to be maintained.
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — The rise of the eVTOL industry will require not only a new generation of aircraft, but also a host of peripheral devices and services that are also in development. Here we will broadly survey what we know about efforts to provide such peripherals in Japan, understanding that many more players will likely be entering these fields in future months and years.
Vertiports
As the term “Urban Air Mobility” (UAM) implies, the eVTOL industry is expected to operate largely over cities, suburbs, and other populated areas. After all, with their vertical take off and landing capabilities and relatively limited flying ranges, eVTOLs will be best suited for such environments. Initially, some vertiports could be placed at designated locations within existing airports or at helipads, but the industry will need to quickly develop its own infrastructure in order reach full potential.
Vertiport construction and operation could very well become a crowded sector, since many Japanese firms possess the necessary skill sets to enter this business. Those we currently know about, however, are limited to the following five.
It was announced in February that there would be a vertiport development tie-up between the Japanese firms Kanematsu Corporation and Japan Airlines (JAL) with Brazil-based Eve Air Mobility and UK-based Skyports.
Also unveiled in February was the All Nippon Airways (ANA) partnership with California-based Joby Aviation, which specified in its press release that ground infrastructure would be included within the scope of the agreement.
In March, it became known that Nippon Koei, a construction industry consultant, is looking at the issue of vertiport design and construction, with specific interests in airfield maintenance, airspace control, power supplies, environmental assessment, and security.
DroNext, an Osaka-based drone firm established in 2019, is in the early stages of development of an eVTOL vertiport which it calls DroNext SmartHub, though no specifics have yet been released.
Finally, in the context of making its partnership with SkyDrive last month, it was suggested that Nankai Electric Railway might offer maintenance services to vertiports, though this appears to be a project that is limited in scope.
RechargingSystems
For eVTOLs to become an effective system for public transportation, the vehicles will need to be recharged quickly once they are on the ground, and another class of companies will be involved in the provision of these services.
However, these firms might overlap with the vertiport companies. For example, the Nippon Koei vertiport initiative clearly involves power supplies as one of its dimensions, and that may be true of some of the others as well.
We have yet to hear of any electric vehicle charging company taking an interest in the Japan eVTOL industry, but it’s probably just a matter of time before one emerges.
Air Traffic Control Systems
As eVTOLs, drone delivery, and related services develop, so too will the skies over populated regions become more crowded with small flying aircraft. Companies are thus working on next-generation air traffic control systems to prevent these many zipping and buzzing machines from crashing into buildings, aerial wires, and each other.
This is an area that is already becoming somewhat crowded, as a number of consortiums would appear to jostling to become the industry standard for Japan.
One company to keep an eye on in this space is Terra Drone. First, in August it formed an alliance with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Mitsui & Co., and Aero Asahi which has already performed demonstration tests of a flight management system. Terra Drone has also recently made an investment in Belgium-based Unifly, a prominent unmanned traffic management system provider, which seems to indicate that it is quite committed to developing this technology.
Another big player is Sumitomo Corporation, which has launched its QX Project with partners OneSky Systems, a Pennsylvania-based firm, and Tohoku University. Texas-based aircraft manufacturer Bell Textron might also be playing a role in this initiative.
FaroStar, a small Tokyo-based company, has been working on an air traffic control technology called Aurora, designed to automatically prevent collisions. It has also been conducting practical tests and demonstrations.
The startup AirMobility has been working with Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Company and Mie Prefecture on its AirNavi navigation system, which includes traffic management functions.
JAL and telecom titan KDDI announced in February that they would be combining their efforts to create a drone traffic management system, which obviously could be extended to an eVTOL system as well.
Washington DC-based ANRA Technologies announced last October that it was entering the Japanese market with its SmartSkies airspace management and drone delivery software platform in partnership with ANA and NEC Corporation.
Finally, the press release on the ANA-Joby partnership stated that development of air traffic management systems is part of their deal, although it is not clear that they intend to develop a system separate from those above.
Communication Systems
Closely related to the air traffic control systems are the communications systems that will service eVTOLs. This will certainly include wide use of 5G technologies at a later stage.
One firm to keep an eye on in this context is KDDI SmartDrone, which is already looking to integrate its 4G LTE networks with next generation drones and eVTOL.
NTT Docomo’s Docomo Sky project, currently aiming to offer drone manufacturers a solution that uses LTE communication for long-range drone flights, also seems poised for an expansion into eVTOL applications.
3D Air Maps
The eVTOL and drone delivery era will require complex feats of navigation to accompany air traffic control systems, and some firms will need to create 3D air maps for the urban landscapes.
The main initiative that has come to attention so far in this sphere is that of Kyoto-based startup MetroWeather, which is working to build an urban weather observation infrastructure to be used for the deployment of both commercial drones and eVTOL.
Insurance
For all the attention being devoted to safety, mishaps are still bound to occur, and there will be a role for insurance companies within the eVTOL industry as well.
It was previously noted the Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Company has been working with AirMobility on its navigation system, and this is clearly in preparation for offering eVTOL insurance at a later stage.
Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance Company also has its eyes on the skies, having decided to offer insurance policies for automated drones that fly over urban areas.
Consulting
Finally, Japan will need private consultants of various kinds to help guide companies through regulatory, cultural, or other obstacles.
Globe+ing is the firm which has most clearly signaled that it wants to occupy this role.
This event is the first international exhibition and conference for new advanced air mobility industry market in Japan and in global market. It features the most updated information of AAM market from Japan and from all over the world.
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — A groundbreaking ceremony was held yesterday for the Abukuma Wind Power Plant, which will be one of the largest onshore wind farms in Japan when it opens in spring 2025.
The farm is located across four municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture: Tamura city, Okuma town, Namie town, and Katsurao village–areas close to the site of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant which suffered a triple meltdown in March 2011.
The Abukuma wind farm will consist of 46 General Electric 3.2MW turbines, which have a total height of about 148 meters, at four locations along the boundaries of the municipalities. The farm will thus have a total installed capacity of 147MW, which is equivalent to the power consumption of about 120,000 households.
The developer is Fukushima Reconstruction Wind Power Co., which is backed by nine companies led by Sumitomo Corporation and JR East Energy Development. It was selected as business operator in 2017 by a public offering from the prefectural government.
The power generated by the wind farm will be sold via a transmission line installed by Fukushima Transmission Co.
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — As the Sony Group unveiled its financial results for last year, it has become increasing clear that the legendary firm once symbolized by consumer electronics such as radios, televisions, and the Sony Walkman is now much more of a global entertainment company.
Sony’s game segment, which includes products such as the Sony PlayStation console, gaming software, and network services, recorded sales of ¥2.7 trillion (US$21.1 billion) from April 2021 to March 2022 (FY2021). This alone represented about 27.7% of the group’s total revenues.
The PlayStation 5 console, of course, is the central product of this segment, and it has become wildly popular in spite of the fact that its rollout has been badly marred by supply shortages, leaving many fans unable to get hold of it. Nevertheless, Sony sold 11.5 million units in FY2021 and it believes it can sell another 18 million in the current fiscal year.
Sony Pictures Entertainment recorded sales of ¥1.2 trillion (US$9.5 billion) in FY2021, making up about 12.5% of the groups’s total revenues. This figure was driven by the enormous success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which became the No. 6 movie ever at the worldwide box office. Venom: Let There Be Carnage also performed well.
Sony’s music segment contributed sales of ¥1.1 trillion (US$8.6 billion) to the group, or about 11.2% of the total. The leading performer among the global recorded music projects was 30, the fourth studio album by English singer-songwriter Adele, released last November.
The firm’s overall consolidated sales last fiscal year were ¥9.9 trillion (US$76.2 billion), a record high.
Sony has not abandoned electronics, of course, and its cameras and even televisions remain an important part of its overall business. Still, with big moves such as the December 2020 purchase of the Crunchyroll anime business, it appears that most of the group’s energies are now focused on entertainment, and that it sees itself less as the iconic electronics firm it has traditionally been known as.
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation for Transport & Urban Development, a public-public-private fund also known as JOIN, has made a new investment in the drone industry.
Together with Terra Drone, JOIN is providing €10 million (US$10.6 million) in funding to the Belgium-based company Unifly, a prominent unmanned traffic management (UTM) system provider.
Tatsuhiko Takesada, president & CEO of JOIN, commented, “Through its equity participation in Unifly, JOIN expects to contribute to the realization of safe and secure aircraft, airport and port operations, and enhancement of drone operation management. JOIN aims to support the expansion of the use of drones in a wide range of fields and further build its growth in the drone industry.”
Fellow investor Toru Tokushige, CEO of Terra Drone, added, “Our airspace is going to get more crowded than ever. There’s an urgent need for a global traffic management solution to enable safe and efficient drone and [urban air mobility] operations. Terra Drone aims to be the leading player building the digital infrastructure in the sky together with Unifly.”
JOIN was established in 2014 under the administration of then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to help promote Japanese companies’ infrastructure exports. It is about 90% owned by the government.
Unifly was founded in 2015 and has previously won major contracts for its UTM system in Belgium, Canada, and Germany.
This event is the first international exhibition and conference for new advanced air mobility industry market in Japan and in global market. It features the most updated information of AAM market from Japan and from all over the world.
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Japan has the third-largest installed solar capacity in the world, but it may soon find itself sliding down the ranks for a variety of reasons.
At the end of the last year, Japan’s cumulative solar capacity reached 78.5GW, putting it far behind China but nearly at the same level as the United States.
In the wake of the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan put strong emphasis on the expansion of solar, boosting it with very generous feed-in tariffs, and by 2015 there was more than 10GW of new capacity coming online each year.
However, the administration of Shinzo Abe de-emphasized this rapid expansion of solar, reduced the feed-in tariffs, and focused more of its attention on trying to restart nuclear power plants, against public opposition and with only limited success.
Under Abe, the yearly solar installations began to decline to about half of the 2015 peak.
But solar’s challenges have not been limited to the long reign of an administration for which renewable energy development was not a key priority. There are also problems inherent in the technology itself.
As many locals will proudly remark, Japan has four seasons. This presents a serious challenge for the solar power industry because the nation’s electricity grid faces relatively high demand from businesses and households in the summer and winter, but relatively weak demand in the mild spring and autumn seasons.
In the long-run, this problem can be alleviated by the development of battery technologies and other storage systems that can keep the energy available until it is needed by the market.
For now, however, it creates a difficult dilemma for the major Japanese utilities. The electricity grid requires a basic balance between supply and demand, or else the nation faces the possibility of widespread power outages.
One after another, starting with Kyushu Electric Power Company in 2018, the regional utilities have been forced to implement output power controls, temporarily suspending their renewable energy feeds from households and start-ups in the milder seasons.
In consequence, power companies that lean heavily on solar and wind power may find themselves unable to recoup their investments for the periods when their energy is not required, and thus disrupting their business performances and splashing cold water on further renewable energy development.
Nevertheless, the Japanese government began reemphasizing renewable energy development, including solar, under the administration of Yoshihide Suga and into the current administration, as part of an international commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
And so, solar energy growth is expected to continue; estimates suggest that Japan may possess about 150GW of installed solar power capacity by the end of this decade.
Additionally, there is likely to be a brisk expansion of alternative business models employing solar, such as onsite corporate power purchase agreements, in which independent power producers sell energy directly to specific clients.
Nevertheless, with many other nations also strongly interested in solar, and the technology becoming more affordable, Japan is unlikely to keep its No. 3 global ranking for very long, even if the Fukushima disaster helped it get off the starting line quickly in the 2010s.
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Car manufacturer Nissan Motor, in partnership with electronics company JVC Kenwood and the Nissan-Sumitomo joint venture 4R Energy, has showcased a prototype portable power supply created from a used battery of a Nissan Leaf Electric Vehicle (EV).
The initiative to recycle EV batteries is part of Nissan’s commitment to the United Nations’ “Race to Zero Campaign,” which Nissan joined in August.
The 4R Energy joint venture was established in 2010 to produce in-vehicle battery systems with the hope of promoting carbon neutrality via EVs. The company has also worked to develop end-of-life solutions for EV batteries, making them an important contributor to its portable power supply project.
The company announced in 2019 that it had obtained third-party certification from leading safety company Underwriter Laboratories to repurpose batteries and to assess second-life applications for them. Aside from being the first organization in the world to receive such certification, 4R Energy previously experimented with powering streetlights with used EV batteries in Namie town, Fukushima Prefecture.
The goal of the collaboration is keep EV batteries from exiting the reduce-reuse-recycle system, with would otherwise leave them uselessly corroding in landfills or contributing to carbon emissions during incineration.
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — A year after the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) established its Next Generation Aviation Mobility Planning Office to centrally handle administrative tasks related to next-generation aviation such as drones and eVTOL (flying cars), the first fruits of these efforts are beginning to appear.
The office launched on April 1, 2021, with an inaugural staff of 22 full-time employees.
Its stated goals are to prepare for the start of Level 4 drone flights (beyond visual line of sight in populated areas) later this year, as well as for the launch of the first eVTOL businesses in Japan sometime next year.
This office has been collaborating with other departments, such as the Japan Civil Aviation Bureau’s Aircraft Technology Examination Center, located within Nagoya Airport, which is in charge of the practical testing of next-generation aviation.
On March 25, the Next Generation Aviation Mobility Planning Office published its Test Flight Guidelines for eVTOL.
Manned or unmanned aerial vehicles over 200 grams in weight (over 100 grams from June 20) are subject to the terms of the Civil Aeronautics Act, but an exception is made for indoor flights as well as test flights conducted within spaces which are surrounded by netting, similar to the conditions seen in SkyDrive’s famous manned hover test at the Toyota Test Field in August 2020.
Among the provisions of the Test Flight Guidelines is that a single person needs to be appointed as the overall manager of the test, so the lines of command and responsibility are clear.
The test area should be an open space, with no structures obstructing takeoff, and with reasonable measures taken to prevent third parties from intruding where the aircraft is being tested, such as fences and warning signs.
Special permission from the MLIT is needed to operate in highly populated areas, in emergency airspace, close to airports, at nighttime, and under several other conditions.
Test vehicles which are controlled by remote control need to have various redundancy measures in place to provide back-up options in the case the control link is broken.
In the same way, other provisions of the Test Flight Guidelines appear to be common sense measures to reduce risks of human harm as Japan’s eVTOL industry begins to lift off.
This event is the first international exhibition and conference for new advanced air mobility industry market in Japan and in global market. It features the most updated information of AAM market from Japan and from all over the world.
Akihabara News (Japan) — Flea market app Mercari now records over 20 million monthly active users on a sustained basis, a mark which it first cracked last September.
Other divisions of the listed firm which once held the title of Japan’s first unicorn are also hitting their highest-ever user numbers. The mobile payment and credit business Merpay now boasts nearly 13 million users, and even the struggling US branch of Mercari now records monthly active user numbers close to 6 million people.
On the other hand, in its latest financial report, the Japanese firm notes that not everything has been smooth sailing.
While it is still growing, the rate of growth has slowed in terms of the number of listings and frequency of purchases. The company attributes this slowdown in part to the fact that people’s fears of the Covid pandemic have been receding, and so they are becoming more prone to leave their homes and to physically go out shopping.
The company also notes that early 2022 has witnessed an increase in fraudulent usage across the industry.
A major recent initiative has been the Mercari Shops, an e-commerce platform allowing anyone to establish their own online shop using just a smartphone. Any business operator, whether an individual or a corporation, can open Mercari Shops.
Fully launched last October, the company reports that there are already more than 200,000 such shops.
However, despite its record numbers of users, new services, and highest-ever revenues, Mercari also reported that it operated at a financial loss in the July 2021-March 2022 period, recording a net loss attributable to owners of the parent company of ¥7.7 billion (US$60 million) over that nine-month period.
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — eVTOL-maker SkyDrive has reported important progress with Japanese regulators on the path toward launching its forthcoming SkyDrive SD-05 two-seater into commercial operations.
Specifically, it has been agreed with the Japan Civil Aviation Bureau (JCAB) of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) to base the “type certification” for the company’s eVTOL on the Airworthiness Inspection Manual Part II.
Effectively, this means that the fundamental rulebook for the government to approve an eVTOL to operate in Japan has now been set.
Airworthiness Inspection Manual Part II defines the necessary capabilities of fixed-wing aircraft that carry up to nineteen passengers and have a takeoff weight of 8,600 kilograms or less. The latest revision of this manual allows flexibility in the shape of the air frame and the aircraft system. It also establishes standards for testing strength, structure, and performance to validate the safety of the aircraft and its components.
SkyDrive Chief Technology Officer Nobuo Kishi stated, “The Japan Civil Aviation Bureau accepted our application for type certification in October 2021. Since then, we have held a series of discussions with the authorities regarding ways to develop and design safe aircraft and the means for testing them. We are very pleased that we have moved a step closer to obtaining a type certificate.”
He added, “We are determined to move ahead with the launch of a flying car business and to ultimately make air mobility a reality for society.”
SkyDrive aims to gain full regulatory approval for its forthcoming two-seater eVTOL by early 2025, before the 2025 World Expo in Osaka.
The company notes that the next step toward regulatory approval is to reach an agreement on the plans for the certification tests, and then later to conduct demonstration flights.
This event is the first international exhibition and conference for new advanced air mobility industry market in Japan and in global market. It features the most updated information of AAM market from Japan and from all over the world.
