INTERVIEW: Planning Before Building — The Critical Role of Simulation in the eVTOL Aircraft Era

The advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) indus­try took anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward with the announce­ment that Elec­tro Ven­tures has acquired Ver­ti­port Sim­u­la­tions, bring­ing togeth­er exper­tise in elec­tric avi­a­tion infra­struc­ture, charg­ing tech­nol­o­gy and dig­i­tal plan­ning tools.

In a recent episode of the eVTOL Insights Pod­cast, host Jason Pritchard was joined by Josh Port­lock, Found­ing Part­ner and Inno­va­tion Direc­tor at Elec­tro Ven­tures, and Joe Mat­tern, Founder of Ver­ti­port Sim­u­la­tions, to dis­cuss the part­ner­ship, the grow­ing impor­tance of sim­u­la­tion tech­nol­o­gy and the future of elec­tric avi­a­tion infra­struc­ture.

For Port­lock, the acqui­si­tion is a nat­ur­al exten­sion of Elec­tro Ven­tures’ broad­er mis­sion to accel­er­ate sus­tain­able mobil­i­ty. The company’s port­fo­lio spans elec­tric avi­a­tion, hydro­foil water­craft and next-gen­er­a­tion trans­porta­tion tech­nolo­gies, all built around the idea of sup­port­ing the tran­si­tion away from tra­di­tion­al fos­sil-fuel-pow­ered trans­port.

Reflect­ing on the growth of the busi­ness, Port­lock explained: “While elec­tric avi­a­tion is my pas­sion and real­ly my dream is to advance elec­tric avi­a­tion and make it avail­able for every­body, that is a very dif­fi­cult indus­try. It’s the hard­est one to tran­si­tion and change as far as elec­tri­fi­ca­tion. We saw oppor­tu­ni­ties to diver­si­fy into oth­er advanced mobil­i­ty sec­tors, but always with the goal of sup­port­ing the future of elec­tric avi­a­tion.”

The addi­tion of Ver­ti­port Sim­u­la­tions strength­ens Elec­tro Ven­tures’ posi­tion across the AAM ecosys­tem by pro­vid­ing a plan­ning and visu­al­i­sa­tion capa­bil­i­ty that com­ple­ments exist­ing busi­ness­es such as Elec­tro Aero and Fly­OnE.

For Mat­tern, the deal rep­re­sents the cul­mi­na­tion of years of col­lab­o­ra­tion and trust between the two organ­i­sa­tions. Although Ver­ti­port Sim­u­la­tions is only two years old, its team has already built a rep­u­ta­tion for cre­at­ing high­ly detailed dig­i­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tions of ver­ti­ports, charg­ing infra­struc­ture and future oper­a­tional envi­ron­ments.

Speak­ing about the acqui­si­tion, Mat­tern said: “It’s just a very hap­py, excit­ing time. We’ve worked dili­gent­ly and, most impor­tant­ly, we’ve always had that amaz­ing rela­tion­ship with Josh back to day one. There’s a lot of respect for each oth­er, a lot of trust, and it’s been a very nat­ur­al join­ing togeth­er.”

A major theme through­out the dis­cus­sion was the grow­ing impor­tance of sim­u­la­tion tech­nol­o­gy as the indus­try moves from con­cept devel­op­ment to real-world imple­men­ta­tion.

While air­craft devel­op­ers con­tin­ue mak­ing progress towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, infra­struc­ture providers and oper­a­tors must now deter­mine how future ver­ti­ports, charg­ers and oper­a­tional net­works will func­tion in prac­tice. Port­lock high­light­ed how sim­u­la­tion is already help­ing cus­tomers make bet­ter infra­struc­ture deci­sions:

He said: “Those sorts of deci­sions are far bet­ter made in sim­u­la­tion than in spec­u­la­tion. When you start talk­ing about tens of charg­ers, think­ing about where they’re going to go rel­a­tive to the FATOs, the charg­ing bays or even the hangars, sim­u­la­tion becomes extreme­ly valu­able.”

Mat­tern expand­ed on this point by describ­ing how Ver­ti­port Sim­u­la­tions enables stake­hold­ers to visu­alise future facil­i­ties before invest­ing sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal. The com­pa­ny uses Microsoft Flight Sim­u­la­tor 2024 along­side pro­pri­etary scenery devel­op­ment tools to cre­ate real­is­tic dig­i­tal envi­ron­ments any­where in the world.

He explained:“All we need is a lat­i­tude and lon­gi­tude of where they want that ver­ti­port or charg­er plat­form to be. Any­where on Earth with­in Microsoft Flight Sim­u­la­tor, we can put it there. We then cre­ate real­is­tic sim­u­la­tions that allow cus­tomers to under­stand lay­outs, oper­a­tions and infra­struc­ture require­ments before con­struc­tion ever begins.”

The con­ver­sa­tion also explored the crit­i­cal role charg­ing infra­struc­ture will play in enabling com­mer­cial eVTOL oper­a­tions. Draw­ing on Elec­tro Aero’s expe­ri­ence oper­at­ing elec­tric air­craft for more than eight years, Port­lock argued that charg­ing should no longer be viewed as an after­thought.

He said: “A five-mil­lion-dol­lar eVTOL air­craft is just a very expen­sive hov­er­ing toy if you don’t have charg­ers at both ends of where you want to fly. Every flight requires charg­ing. That makes infra­struc­ture absolute­ly crit­i­cal.”

Port­lock also stressed the impor­tance of design­ing charg­ing sys­tems around air­craft oper­a­tions rather than forc­ing air­craft to adapt to fixed infra­struc­ture, say­ing: “Don’t bring the five-mil­lion-dol­lar air­craft to the hun­dred-thou­sand-dol­lar charg­er. Bring the hun­dred-thou­sand-dol­lar charg­er to the five-mil­lion-dol­lar air­craft. It’s eas­i­er, safer and more effi­cient.”

Look­ing ahead, both guests expressed con­fi­dence that 2025 and beyond will mark a turn­ing point for infra­struc­ture deploy­ment. Gov­ern­ment-backed ini­tia­tives, grow­ing air­craft matu­ri­ty and increased indus­try col­lab­o­ra­tion are cre­at­ing momen­tum across the sec­tor.

Port­lock described the cur­rent peri­od as “the year of growth for infra­struc­ture”, while empha­sis­ing that col­lab­o­ra­tion remains essen­tial.

He said: “We’re not in a com­pet­i­tive phase of this indus­try yet where it’s about mar­ket share. It’s real­ly about mar­ket adop­tion. What­ev­er we can all do to help each oth­er and help the indus­try get bet­ter adop­tion ben­e­fits every­one.”

Mat­tern shared a sim­i­lar­ly opti­mistic out­look, par­tic­u­lar­ly regard­ing Florida’s emer­gence as a lead­ing AAM mar­ket. He high­light­ed the company’s vision for future ver­ti­ports across the state and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­bine sim­u­la­tion, charg­ing infra­struc­ture and renew­able ener­gy sys­tems into ful­ly inte­grat­ed facil­i­ties.

As the episode con­cludes, one mes­sage is clear: advanced air mobil­i­ty is no longer just about air­craft. Suc­cess will depend on cre­at­ing a com­plete ecosys­tem that includes ver­ti­ports, charg­ing net­works, ener­gy sys­tems and oper­a­tional plan­ning tools.

Through their new part­ner­ship, Elec­tro Ven­tures and Ver­ti­port Sim­u­la­tions are posi­tion­ing them­selves at the cen­tre of that trans­for­ma­tion, help­ing turn vir­tu­al con­cepts into real-world infra­struc­ture that will sup­port the next gen­er­a­tion of avi­a­tion.