300th entry added to Vertical Flight Society’s eVTOL World Aircraft Directory

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS) has now cat­a­logued its 300th eVTOL air­craft in its World eVTOL Air­craft Direc­to­ry — an increase of 50 since the start of the year.

The society’s web­site, www.evtol.news, adds all known eVTOL air­craft and the com­pre­hen­sive direc­to­ry now rep­re­sents 215 dif­fer­ent companies/developers in the indus­try.

For the past 30 months, the VFS World eVTOL Air­craft Direc­to­ry has grown at a steady pace of 100 entries per year — with an aver­age of two new eVTOL air­craft con­cepts being added each week. These entries include every­thing from con­cep­tu­al stud­ies and defunct projects, to air­craft that are cur­rent­ly being flown for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion test­ing.

Mike Hirschberg, VFS Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, said: “Elec­tric VTOL air­craft hold out the promise of being much safer, cheap­er, clean­er and qui­eter. The devel­op­ment of these air­craft is part of a larg­er glob­al trend to sup­port invest­ment in sus­tain­able avi­a­tion that con­tin­ues in spite of the nov­el coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic.”

About $4 bil­lion has gone into explor­ing the trans­for­ma­tive poten­tial of eVTOL air­craft since the VFS held the world’s first meet­ing of the eVTOL devel­op­ment com­mu­ni­ty in 2014, which was a launch pad for what the soci­ety sees as an ‘Elec­tric VTOL Rev­o­lu­tion’.

The VFS says much of the approx­i­mate­ly $1 bil­lion in annu­al fund­ing for eVTOL air­craft for pas­sen­ger and car­go urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) and oth­er advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) mis­sions is com­ing from out­side of the tra­di­tion­al aero­space indus­try.

In Jan­u­ary 2020, Toy­ota Motor Cor­po­ra­tion invest­ed $394M into Joby Avi­a­tion, bring­ing total out­side invest­ment to $720 mil­lion, while Hyundai Motor has pledged to invest $1.5 bil­lion in its UAM efforts.

Ger­man air taxi start-up Lil­i­um has now raised $376 mil­lion from investors like Bail­lie Gif­ford, Ten­cent and Atom­i­co, while Volo­copter has received $140 mil­lion, large­ly from trans­porta­tion com­pa­nies like Daim­ler, Geely and DB Schenker.

“We need to pre­pare now for the urban mobil­i­ty needs of the future,” said Michael Dyment, Man­ag­ing Part­ner of NEXA Cap­i­tal, which has part­nered with VFS to sup­port eVTOL advance­ment. “Now is the time to plan, design and invest in the air­craft, air traf­fic man­age­ment and infra­struc­ture required for UAM. Infra­struc­ture alone is worth $19 bil­lion between now and 2040.”

NEXA’s sub­sidiary, UAM Geo­mat­ics (www.nexa-uam.com), pro­vides an inter­ac­tive web por­tal to 75 city pro­files around the world that con­tains data on thou­sands of heli­ports, future infra­struc­ture needs, and over­all pas­sen­ger demand.

From 28th — 30th July, VFS is co-spon­sor­ing the Elec­tric Air­craft Sym­po­sium (EAS), which has been organ­ised by the Com­par­a­tive Air­craft Flight Effi­cien­cy (CAFE) Foun­da­tion.

And from 5th-8th Octo­ber, it will also hold its 76th Annu­al Forum & Tech­nol­o­gy Con­fer­ence () — the largest ver­ti­cal flight tech­nol­o­gy con­fer­ence in the world.

This vir­tu­al tech­ni­cal meet­ing will fea­ture some 230 tech­ni­cal papers over 40 ses­sions, com­ple­ment­ed by VIP speak­ers from indus­try and gov­ern­ment, and an exten­sive online exhib­it hall. Forum 76 includes dozens of talks and exhibits on eVTOL/AAM.

VFS is focused not just on the air­craft but also the broad­er “ecosys­tem” nec­es­sary to sup­port the broad adop­tion of eVTOL air­craft. The Soci­ety is hold­ing its 3rd Work­shop on eVTOL Infra­struc­ture for UAM () on Sept. 1–3, 2020.

This vir­tu­al meet­ing is ded­i­cat­ed to address­ing infra­struc­ture chal­lenges and plot­ting out a plan of action — in col­lab­o­ra­tion with indus­try and gov­ern­ment stake­hold­ers — to advance eVTOL devel­op­ment.