Private equity and venture capital professionals predict strong regulatory advances in the eVTOL market

A new sur­vey of pri­vate equi­ty and ven­ture cap­i­tal pro­fes­sion­als com­mis­sioned by Hori­zon Air­craft reveals that over the next two years, 88% expect improve­ments in the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for the eVTOL mar­ket and 15% antic­i­pate there will be a dra­mat­ic improve­ment.

When it comes to which eVTOL’s pri­vate equi­ty and ven­ture cap­i­tal pro­fes­sion­als believe offer the most attrac­tive oppor­tu­ni­ties for investors, 89% cit­ed those that fly most of their time as nor­mal air­craft because they are deemed to be safer, mak­ing it eas­i­er for them to be cer­ti­fied.

In terms of what the main hur­dles are to achiev­ing reg­u­la­to­ry approval for eVTOL air­craft, safe­ty mea­sures are seen as the biggest by pro­fes­sion­al investors, fol­lowed by meet­ing cer­tain stan­dards regard­ing oper­a­tions and main­te­nance, pilot train­ing require­ments, and the qual­i­ty of soft­ware used by oper­a­tors.

When it comes to which coun­tries pro­fes­sion­al investors believe are cur­rent­ly the most
advanced in their reg­u­la­to­ry plans for the eVTOL mar­ket, pri­vate equi­ty and ven­ture cap­i­tal pro­fes­sion­als cit­ed the USA, Cana­da, the UK, Ger­many, and Chi­na as the top five. The Euro­pean Union also scored high­ly.

Bran­don Robin­son, CEO of Hori­zon Air­craft said: “The eVTOL mar­ket is mak­ing huge advances in terms of its over­all devel­op­ment and tech­nol­o­gy, and this is spurring on reg­u­la­tors to devel­op an appro­pri­ate cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and oper­at­ing frame­work for the sec­tor, which will lead to fur­ther invest­ment in the indus­try and more growth and tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments.”

Hori­zon Aircraft’s flag­ship Cavorite X5 design has won a US Depart­ment of Defence advanced research and devel­op­ment con­tract award, ahead of its com­peti­tors with its large-scale pro­to­type already fly­ing.

Cavorite X5 flies 98% of its mis­sion in a low-drag con­fig­u­ra­tion like a tra­di­tion­al air­craft, mak­ing it safer and eas­i­er to cer­ti­fy than rad­i­cal new eVTOL designs. The full-scale air­craft will also be pow­ered by a hybrid elec­tric sys­tem that can recharge the bat­tery in-flight while pro­vid­ing addi­tion­al sys­tem redun­dan­cy.

Ear­li­er this month, 3C and Hori­zon Air­craft signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing under which the two com­pa­nies will col­lab­o­rate on the con­tin­ued devel­op­ment and path to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Cavorite X5 pro­gram.

In March 2021, Hori­zon Air­craft com­plet­ed more than 200 test flights using a sub-scale pro­to­type of its Cavorite X5 hybrid-elec­tric eVTOL air­craft.