SkyDrive Signs Tripartite MOU with Goyang Special City and Verty for Commercial eVTOL Deployment in South Korea
Why It MattersThe deal shows Japanese eVTOL developers positioning inside South Korea's K-UAM programme through municipal and systems-integrator partnerships, ahead of the ministry's 2028 target for commercial operations.
SkyDrive Inc., a Japan-based compact eVTOL developer headquartered in Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, announced on Nov. 4, 2026 that it has signed a tripartite memorandum of understanding with Goyang Special City and Verty Co. Ltd. Goyang is the Seoul Capital Area hub for South Korea's national urban air mobility (K-UAM) initiative and is leading vertiport development. Verty is a Seoul-based company building integrated systems across flight operations, air traffic management and vertiport administration.

Under the agreement, the three parties will collaborate across the public and private sectors to establish operational infrastructure, conduct flight trials and build a regional ecosystem to prepare for commercial eVTOL flights in Goyang. The key areas of collaboration are industry growth and promotion, flight trials and commercial deployment, joint project exploration, and comprehensive trilateral cooperation. The MOU was signed at DRONE-UAM EXPO 2026 at KINTEX in Goyang, held Nov. 4-6, 2026, by Goyang mayor Min Kyeong-seon, Verty CEO Dong-Woo Kim and SkyDrive founder and CEO Tomohiro Fukuzawa.
South Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has set a roadmap to launch commercial eVTOL operations by 2028, and SkyDrive says it aims to prepare the ecosystem for commercial operations by that year. SkyDrive and Verty co-hosted an exhibition booth at the expo featuring a 20% scale mockup of the commercial SKYDRIVE (SD-05 model) aircraft.
SkyDrive says it has reached an agreement with the Japan Civil Aviation Bureau on its project plan and type certification basis, following uncrewed demonstration flights at Expo 2025 Osaka. Using assembly lines established with Suzuki Motor Corporation, it is advancing commercialization projects with local partners and municipalities across 10 countries. Goyang, with a population exceeding 1 million and located adjacent to Gimpo International Airport, is the designated primary metropolitan demonstration site for the K-UAM Grand Challenge and is building vertiport testbeds around KINTEX.

















































