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The eVTOL Industry: “Ups and Inevitable Downs of 2024”

Those mag­nif­i­cent men in their fly­ing machines have raced through anoth­er year with some great ups, but also inevitable downs. It was going to be 2024 when the first elec­tric air taxis began com­mer­cial flights. This was moved to 2025 and let’s be hon­est, it may be 2026. But then who cares about real­i­ty, when you are being sucked in to a phan­tas­magor­i­cal, busi­ness dis­rupt­ing dream, that ticks all the green box­es and relieves the increas­ing road con­ges­tion of glob­al cities. What’s a few years amongst like-mind­ed peo­ple?

Let’s get a few of those downs out of the way, first.

Paris Olympic Games

All those promis­es with Voloc­i­ty fly­ing over Paris dur­ing the sum­mer Olympics, to be watched poten­tial­ly by up to 4 bil­lion peo­ple on TV. Remem­ber that? Only to end in polit­i­cal wran­gling from the Parisian left and the wrath of anar­chic groups parad­ing as green sav­iours of the plan­et. A damp squib if there ever was one.

What a dis­ap­point­ment. 

Lil­i­um

Lil­i­um had a rough and tum­ble year. Its Ger­man gov­ern­ment showed scant regard to invest­ing in a home-grown fly­ing taxi com­pa­ny, forc­ing it to file for insol­ven­cy. This was a bru­tal wake up call for the eVTOL indus­try. The veneer of finan­cial win­dow dress­ing col­lapsed in one press release. The costs of bring­ing an elec­tric air taxi to mar­ket, some pun­dits sug­gest, is close to USD1 bil­lion. That is the real­i­ty and good­ness knows how many oth­er fly­ing taxi star­tups will face a sim­i­lar fate over the com­ing years.

The ups are many. The eVTOL peck­ing order is more appar­ent. Joby Avi­a­tion is lead­ing the pack in the West, while Archer con­tin­ues its ongo­ing ‘catch-up’. A case of steady as she goes with an occa­sion­al jaun­ty skip.

BETA Tech­nolo­gies is close behind fol­lowed by Wisk, Eve Air Mobil­i­ty, Super­nal, Jaunt amongst oth­ers. In fact, in Ser­gio Cecutta’s lat­est ‘AAM Real­i­ty Index’ pub­lished this week, he places BETA as No.2 in the glob­al list and above Joby.

Chi­na

And who is No.1? EHang, of course. The Chi­nese are five, per­haps ten years ahead of the West’s eVTOL indus­try. A recent arti­cle promis­ing 100,000 air taxis and per­son­al vehi­cles to be fly­ing over China’s cities by 2030 may sound ludi­crous, but why not?

The key to this indus­try is con­struct­ing the infra­struc­ture and where there’s a will, there is a way, espe­cial­ly when Chi­na doesn’t suf­fer from strin­gent plan­ning red tape, NIMBIES or ‘save the ant’ brigade. Any lengthy protest­ing and it’s prob­a­bly off to prison.

New eVTOL start-ups seem­ing­ly emerge by the month, while sea­soned com­pa­nies like Aut­oFlight, Aerofu­gia, ZeroG, Volant, T‑Cab and Wan­feng Dia­mond are neat­ly posi­tioned behind EHang. With the country’s rul­ing class whole­heart­ed­ly behind the green avi­a­tion rev­o­lu­tion and the cre­ation of a Low Alti­tude Econ­o­my, do not be sur­prised if that 100,000 fig­ure becomes a real­i­ty.

Mid­dle East  

Which leads on to the Mid­dle East. A com­bi­na­tion of unfet­tered mon­ey and a desire to beat Amer­i­ca over an emerg­ing new mar­ket, offers the nec­es­sary ambi­tion. In fact, the West should be high­ly appre­cia­tive of the Mid East’s inter­est, espe­cial­ly Joby, Archer and Sky­ports who signed a num­ber of prized con­tracts dur­ing 2024.

The region will co-head ‘the rev­o­lu­tion’ start­ing in 2026, as like Chi­na, build­ing of the essen­tial infra­struc­ture should not be imped­ed. An increas­ing num­ber of ana­lysts believe the Mid­dle East is key to the growth of the indus­try lead­ing up to 2030.

Stand Outs 

And a top stand out of 2024? Joby’s land­mark 523 mile flight using a hydrogen/electric propul­sion sys­tem. Now that is impres­sive.

Also impres­sive for French musi­cian Jean-Michel Jarre, was being the first pas­sen­ger in the Klein­Vi­sion fly­ing car. He described his flight “like being in a Jules Verne book, but for real…” and con­tin­ued “It was a tru­ly amaz­ing expe­ri­ence!” Per­haps, he will com­pose a new elec­tron­ic music album cap­tur­ing the moment.

Then there are the sil­ver lin­ings. Lil­i­um has sev­er­al poten­tial com­pa­ny buy­ers; Volo­copter also vul­ner­a­ble “to Euro­pean finan­cial dis­in­ter­est”, alleged­ly has Geely wait­ing in the wings; Ver­ti­cal Aero­space boasts fur­ther and much need­ed invest­ment; and Amer­i­ca has a new Pres­i­dent, vowed to com­pete, no wait… even beat (!) Chi­na in the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty indus­try with promis­es of build­ing ten new U.S Free­dom cities, all to use elec­tric air taxis and drones. He even has a deputy sher­iff ide­al­ly posi­tioned to super­charge America’s Urban Air Mobil­i­ty inter­ests.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Michael Whitak­er is step­ping down from the FAA in Jan­u­ary caus­ing a fur­rowed brow amongst AAM afi­ciona­dos, but the future can take care of itself as Xmas beck­ons. While, for those long-term, rather demor­alised investors of Archer and Joby, what won­der­ful cheer as their com­pa­ny shares dou­bled in price dur­ing Decem­ber.

As for 2025, that attracts a crys­tal ball arti­cle in ear­ly Jan­u­ary… methinks.

To All eVTOL Insights Read­ers: A Very Mer­ry Christ­mas and a Hap­py New Year.

(Top image — Illus­tra­tion by Tay­lor Callery)

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