eVTOL Aircraft Market Worth $1.75 Billion by 2028 at 35.6% CAGR Led by Piloted Segment

Accord­ing to new research just pub­lished by The Insight Part­ners, the eVTOL air­craft mar­ket is expect­ed to grow from $519 mil­lion in 2024 to $1.75 bil­lion by 2028, a com­pound aver­age growth rate (CAGR) of 35.6% from 2024 to 2028.

The mar­ket is seg­ment­ed into North Amer­i­ca, Europe, Asia Pacif­ic, and the Rest of World. In 2024, Europe is expect­ed to lead the mar­ket fol­lowed by North Amer­i­ca, which is expect­ed to reg­is­ter the high­est CAGR in the mar­ket from 2024 to 2028.

Volo­copter, a Ger­man air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er and a lead­ing pio­neer of urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM), plans to launch the world’s first-ever eVTOL suite of ser­vices with the help of pas­sen­ger air taxis and heavy-lift car­go drones between 2024 and 2026.

In March 2022, Jetex and Volo­copter signed a strate­gic part­ner­ship agree­ment to deploy and oper­ate per­ma­nent, eco­nom­i­cal­ly sus­tain­able, and inte­grat­ed UAM taxi take­off and land­ing infra­struc­ture and ser­vices for pas­sen­ger trans­porta­tion.

North Amer­i­ca is expect­ed to be the fastest grow­ing region due to the pres­ence of ven­dors such as Archer Avi­a­tion, Alakai Skai, Open­er Aero, BETA Tech­nolo­gies, Grav­i­tas, Joby Avi­a­tion, Wisk Aero, Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty, Kit­ty­hawk, and Bell Tex­tron.

In Feb­ru­ary 2021, Unit­ed Air­lines and Archer Avi­a­tion announced a part­ner­ship where the for­mer would pur­chase 200 eVTOL air­craft from Archer. Then in June 2021, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space announced deals worth $4 bil­lion with Amer­i­can Air­lines, Vir­gin Atlantic, and leas­ing group Avolon for up to 1,000 of its VA-X4 eVTOL air­craft.

The over­all impact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic on the glob­al avi­a­tion indus­try is severe, with expect­ed loss­es of $200 bil­lion from 2020 to 2022 lead­ing to declined air­craft pro­duc­tion, dis­rupt­ed sup­ply chain dur­ing 2020, post­poned orders, trans­porta­tion chal­lenges for sourc­ing mate­ri­als or parts, and labour chal­lenges for ven­dors.

Ongo­ing projects such as test­ing, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, and pro­duc­tion of pro­to­types have been severe­ly impact­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

Com­pa­nies such as Lil­i­um and Volo­copter have wit­nessed ris­ing pre-orders, for instance in 2021, when Lil­i­um announced that it had secured a con­tract worth $1 bil­lion to pro­vide 220 units of its five-seater eVTOL air­craft to Lux­avi­a­tion Group. In 2022, Lil­i­um got anoth­er pre-order of 150 six-pas­sen­ger jets from Net­Jets.

The eVTOL air­craft mar­ket is seg­ment­ed into lift tech­nol­o­gy, propul­sion type, appli­ca­tion, and oper­a­tion mode. lift tech­nol­o­gy is seg­ment­ed into mul­ti­ro­tor, lift plus cruise and vec­tored thrust, while propul­sion type is seg­ment­ed into hybrid, ful­ly elec­tric, and elec­tric hydro­gen.

The mar­ket is cat­e­gorised into air taxi; car­go trans­port; last mile deliv­ery; crit­i­cal mis­sions; and inspec­tion, sur­vey­ing, and map­ping. Based on oper­a­tion mode, the eVTOL air­craft mar­ket is seg­ment­ed into pilot­ed, option­al­ly pilot­ed, and autonomous.

The play­ers include Air­bus, Bell Tex­tron, Boe­ing, Eve Air Mobil­i­ty, Lil­i­um, Open­er, EHang, BETA Tech­nolo­gies, Pip­istrel, Volo­copter, Joby Avi­a­tion, Heart Aero­space, and Archer Avi­a­tion.

In Jan­u­ary 2022, Thales part­nered with Eve to devel­op its eVTOL air­craft in Brazil in a series of joint stud­ies over a twelve-month peri­od on the tech­ni­cal, eco­nom­ic, and adapt­able fea­si­bil­i­ty of a 100% elec­tri­cal­ly pow­ered air­craft.

In 2021, Heart Aero­space part­nered with Aren­no­va Aero­space to design the wing, fuse­lage, and empen­nage for the new ES-19 elec­tric air­craft car­ry­ing 19 pas­sen­gers on short region­al routes.