REVIEW: Another year of progress in the eVTOL aircraft market as it edges closer to commercialisation

It’s been anoth­er fas­ci­nat­ing year of high­lights across the entire Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem.

The last 12 months has seen sig­nif­i­cant mile­stones in terms of bat­tery devel­op­ment, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and reg­u­la­tion and land­ing infra­struc­ture. As well as excit­ing new part­ner­ships being formed and poten­tial new mar­ket regions being iden­ti­fied, numer­ous eVTOL OEMs revealed their lat­est air­craft mod­els.

Notable high­lights includ­ed Wisk’s unveil­ing of its Gen 6 air­craft in Sep­tem­ber, while Archer revealed its Mid­night air­craft in Palo Alto in Novem­ber. Oth­er com­pa­nies to reveal some aspects or whole mod­els this year includ­ed Limosa, ZURI, Volk­swa­gen Group Chi­na, Super­nal, AIR, Bell­wether Indus­tries, Aut­oFlight and Doroni Aero­space.

Sig­nif­i­cant mile­stones were abun­dant this year. From the FAA pub­lish­ing the air­wor­thi­ness cri­te­ria for Joby Avi­a­tion and Archer’s eVTOL air­craft, to AFWERX per­form­ing the first USAF-pilot­ed flight in an eVTOL air­craft and EASA pub­lish­ing the world’s first ver­ti­port design spec­i­fi­ca­tions for UAM ser­vices in Europe. Mul­ti­ple deals with land­ing infra­struc­ture providers such as Sky­ports, Urban-Air Port, VPorts, Sky­portz and Lux­avi­a­tion has meant the whole ecosys­tem is, for now, mov­ing at the same pace.

As well as indus­try news and pod­casts, eVTOL Insights also released its sec­ond Pow­er Book back in Jan­u­ary and host­ed its first con­fer­ences in Lon­don and New York. These events alto­geth­er were attend­ed by more than 200 indus­try pro­fes­sion­als from across the world, with speak­ers from the likes of Joby Avi­a­tion, Archer, Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty, Volo­copter, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, Eve Air Mobil­i­ty and Wisk.

We were also delight­ed to be joined by oth­er com­pa­nies such as NASA, the US Air Force, UK Research and Inno­va­tion, VPorts, TruWeath­er Solu­tions, Coflow Jet, Gilmore Group, Sky­ports, Dufour Aero­space, Man­ta Air­craft, Elroy Air and Rolls-Royce Elec­tri­cal.

My notable high­lights for 2022 was attend­ing Farn­bor­ough Air­show back in July — the first time the event had been put on since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Despite the sti­fling 40 degree heat, you could clear­ly see Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty was grab­bing the atten­tion of those in atten­dance. The likes of Eve, Super­nal, Lil­i­um and Ver­ti­cal Aero­space were able to bring a pro­to­type of their eVTOL air­craft to the show and each stand was packed with onlook­ers keen to get a clos­er look at the future of avi­a­tion.

In Sep­tem­ber, I also had the plea­sure of being one of the first indus­try jour­nal­ists to see Wisk’s Gen 6 air­craft in the flesh. This was an incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence and one I won’t for­get in a hur­ry. I was then back over to the USA in Octo­ber for our sec­ond con­fer­ence in New York, which was resound­ing suc­cess and con­tin­ued where we left off in Lon­don back in April.

We’ve got some real­ly excit­ing plans for next year as the indus­try con­tin­ues to gath­er pace, so we hope to see more of you through­out 2023. As some of you might know already, we’ll be kick­ing off the new year with the release of our Pow­er Book in Jan­u­ary, which defines the biggest inno­va­tors, influ­encers and thought lead­ers in the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket.

Decid­ing who gets fea­tured each year nev­er gets any eas­i­er, but we hope you will join us in recog­nis­ing and cel­e­brat­ing their achieve­ments. You will be able to down­load a copy from our web­site after we offi­cial­ly launch it across our social media chan­nels.

On behalf of myself and the rest of team at eVTOL Insights, thank you for your con­tin­ued sup­port this year. We wish you a very Mer­ry Christ­mas and look for­ward to work­ing with you in 2023!