Vertical Flight Society reports $5 billion invested in eVTOL aircraft to-date and growth of market despite Covid-19 pandemic

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS) has released fas­ci­nat­ing details about the growth of the world’s eVTOL air­craft devel­op­ments, despite the ongo­ing glob­al Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.

While the com­mer­cial avi­a­tion indus­try has been affect­ed on a huge eco­nom­ic scale, the VFS has said invest­ment in eVTOL air­craft has con­tin­ued at the rate of about $1 bil­lion per year. Last year saw a num­ber of first flights, as well as a sig­nif­i­cant increase in flight-test­ing — with 24 com­pa­nies now fly­ing mul­ti-pas­sen­ger eVTOL air­craft.

Its pop­u­lar World Direc­to­ry now fea­tures more than 400 dif­fer­ent eVTOL con­cepts — an increase of more than 150 over the past year — while some $5 bil­lion has now been invest­ed into eVTOL air­craft and sys­tems devel­op­ment to-date, with much of the fund­ing com­ing from out­side of the tra­di­tion­al aero­space indus­try.

Mike Hirschberg, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor at the VFS, said: “This past year saw con­tin­ued growth and progress in eVTOL devel­op­ments. Our mem­bers in indus­try, acad­e­mia and gov­ern­ment agen­cies around the world have been tack­ling the tough­est chal­lenges in ver­ti­cal flight, prov­ing out the promise of this new approach to air mobil­i­ty.

“Despite the pan­dem­ic, or per­haps because of it, com­pa­nies around the world that are seek­ing to suc­ceed with eVTOL tech­nolo­gies turn to VFS. We have been lead­ing efforts to advance elec­tric ver­ti­cal flight for the past sev­en years and have been work­ing tire­less­ly to expand the eVTOL com­mu­ni­ty.”

VFS has been at the fore­front of what it calls the ‘Elec­tric VTOL Rev­o­lu­tion’ since 2014, when it held the world’s first meet­ing of the eVTOL devel­op­ment com­mu­ni­ty.

It was found­ed as the Amer­i­can Heli­copter Soci­ety in 1943 by the vision­ar­ies of the ear­ly heli­copter indus­try, who believed that tech­no­log­i­cal coop­er­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion were essen­tial to sup­port this new type of air­craft. Today, VFS is play­ing a sim­i­lar role help­ing to advance today’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary eVTOL air­craft.

The soci­ety has seen record growth in cor­po­rate mem­bers con­tin­ue. As of Jan­u­ary 1st, more than 135 com­pa­nies have joined — rep­re­sent­ing a 15 per cent growth over 2020 and a dou­bling over the past five years.

And from Jan­u­ary 26th-28th, the Society’s 8th Annu­al Elec­tric VTOL Sym­po­sium — held vir­tu­al­ly and in con­junc­tion with its 9th Bien­ni­al Autonomous VTOL Tech­ni­cal Meet­ing — con­tin­ues as the world’s largest and longest-run­ning event focus­ing on the incred­i­ble promise, progress and chal­lenges of eVTOL air­craft.

VFS also holds the largest and longest-run­ning ver­ti­cal flight tech­ni­cal con­fer­ence in the world. The 77^th Annu­al Forum & Tech­nol­o­gy Dis­play will take place in West Palm Beach, Flori­da, USA, from May 11th-13th. Vis­it www.vtol.org/forum for details.