Eve Air Mobility Completes Successful First Flight of Full-Scale Prototype of Its eVTOL Aircraft

Eve Air Mobil­i­ty has com­plet­ed the first flight of its uncrewed full-scale eVTOL pro­to­type at Embraer’s test facil­i­ty in Gav­ião Peixo­to, state of São Paulo in Brazil.

The inau­gur­al flight ini­ti­ates Eve’s flight test phase and con­firms the inte­gra­tion of key sys­tems, includ­ing the fifth-gen­er­a­tion fly-by-wire con­cept and the fixed-pitch lifter rotors.

The com­pa­ny will per­form mul­ti­ple flights fol­low­ing today’s hov­er flight, grad­u­al­ly expand­ing the enve­lope to tran­si­tion into full wing­borne flights through­out 2026.

Johann Bor­dais, CEO of Eve, said: “Today, Eve flew. This is a his­tor­i­cal mile­stone for our employ­ees, cus­tomers, investors and the entire ecosys­tem.

“This flight val­i­dates our plan, which has been exe­cut­ed with pre­ci­sion to deliv­er the best solu­tion for the mar­ket. We were able to cap­ture high-fideli­ty data that will allow us to move for­ward with safe­ty and con­fi­dence towards the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion path.”

Eve will man­u­fac­ture six con­form­ing pro­to­types to con­duct the flight test cam­paign, aim­ing for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

The Com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to engage with Brazil’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Agency (ANAC), Eve’s eVTOL pri­ma­ry cer­ti­fy­ing author­i­ty, to advance the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process. Look­ing ahead, Eve expects type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, first deliv­er­ies and entry into ser­vice in 2027.  

Next steps for the pro­gram include pro­gres­sive enve­lope expan­sion and tran­si­tions to wing­borne flight, as well as con­tin­ued engage­ment with ANAC, oth­er reg­u­la­tors and val­i­dat­ing author­i­ties, includ­ing FAA and EASA.

Luiz Valen­ti­ni, Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer at Eve, said: “We exer­cised our con­trol laws, ver­i­fied the inte­gra­tion of the eight lifters and assessed ener­gy man­age­ment, the aircraft’s dynam­ic response and noise foot­print.

“The pro­to­type behaved as pre­dict­ed by our mod­els. With these data points, we will expand the enve­lope and progress toward tran­si­tion to wing­borne flight in a dis­ci­plined man­ner, ramp­ing up to hun­dreds of flights through­out 2026 and build­ing the knowl­edge required for type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

Jorge Bit­ter­court, Chief Prod­uct Offi­cer at Eve, added: “This flight gives the prod­uct a clear green light to advance what mat­ters to oper­a­tors: reli­a­bil­i­ty, effi­cien­cy and sim­plic­i­ty. We val­i­dat­ed crit­i­cal ele­ments, from our lifter archi­tec­ture to air­craft flight mechan­ics, and now we move into the flight test phase, aim­ing to advance the prod­uct matu­ri­ty.”

Eve lever­ages Embraer’s 56 years of aero­space exper­tise in design­ing, cer­ti­fy­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing and deliv­er­ing state-of-the-art air­craft, as well as the company’s glob­al after­mar­ket ser­vice foot­print. Eve con­tin­ues to focus on safe­ty, sim­plic­i­ty and dis­patch­a­bil­i­ty to meet oper­a­tor needs at scale.

Full-scale mock-up images: