Leonardo to work on the development of fuselage for Vertical Aerospace’s VX4 eVTOL aircraft

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has agreed a joint devel­op­ment pro­gramme with Leonar­do for the design, test­ing, man­u­fac­ture and sup­ply of the car­bon com­pos­ite fuse­lage for Ver­ti­cal’s VX4 eVTOL air­craft.

Both com­pa­nies will now work togeth­er on opti­mis­ing light­weight com­pos­ite struc­tures, mod­u­lar design, sys­tems instal­la­tion, and struc­tur­al test­ing for the co-devel­op­ment of the aircraft’s fuse­lage. This is cur­rent­ly in place for at least six cer­ti­fi­ca­tion air­craft, up to the suc­cess­ful cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the VX4.

The agree­ment has also stat­ed the poten­tial to scale fuse­lage pro­duc­tion to 2,000 air­craft a year to meet Vertical’s exist­ing mar­ket-lead­ing order book demand.

Michael Cer­ven­ka, Pres­i­dent of Ver­ti­cal, said: “Ver­ti­cal is pio­neer­ing elec­tric avi­a­tion and is on a mis­sion to trans­form the way peo­ple trav­el. I have been huge­ly impressed by Leonardo’s high­ly inno­v­a­tive and indus­try lead­ing tech­ni­cal and man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties and our part­ner­ship has got off to a fly­ing start.

“I’m thrilled that Leonar­do will be join­ing us in this jour­ney. We have a mar­ket-lead­ing pre-order book for our VX4, and this part­ner­ship will ensure that we can scale the pro­gramme to meet demand.”

Leonar­do has long-estab­lished exper­tise in com­pos­ite aero-struc­tures devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing on civ­il and defense pro­grams. The aero­space firm also has a close rela­tion­ship with Vertical’s strate­gic com­pos­ite mate­ri­als sup­pli­er, Solvay. Ver­ti­cal and Solvay are joint­ly devel­op­ing advanced mate­ri­als and man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nolo­gies that will enable high vol­ume man­u­fac­ture of the VX4.

Lucio Vale­rio Ciof­fi, Leonardo’s Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, said: “Advanced air mobil­i­ty is part of Leonardo’s man­date to inno­vate using our cut­ting edge, human-cen­tred tech­nol­o­gy and indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion exper­tise. We’re proud to col­lab­o­rate with Ver­ti­cal as part of our strate­gic vision in this brand new sec­tor.”

Gian­car­lo Schisano, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Leonardo’s Aerostruc­tures Divi­sion, added: “Leonar­do, as part­ner to the world’s lead­ing com­mer­cial air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ers, is spe­cialised in the pro­duc­tion and assem­bly of major struc­tur­al com­pos­ite and metal­lic com­po­nents for com­mer­cial air­craft.

“Leonar­do strives to bring new tech­nolo­gies, mate­ri­als and process­es into our estab­lished prac­tices in our pro­duc­tion sites. This will be the case at our Grot­taglie plant in South­ern Italy, where we will focus our VX4 activ­i­ties; the plant is one of the most advanced facil­i­ties in Europe to pro­duce com­pos­ite aerostruc­tures.”

Vertical’s part­ner­ship with Leonar­do builds on its unpar­al­leled ecosys­tem of part­ners, includ­ing Rolls-Royce, Hon­ey­well, Solvay, GKN and Microsoft. Ver­ti­cal con­tin­ues to grow its team of expe­ri­enced engi­neers and avi­a­tion exec­u­tives and expects to begin the VX4’s test flight pro­gramme lat­er in 2022.

The com­pa­ny has what it believes is the largest con­di­tion­al pre-order book by val­ue in the eVTOL indus­try, which includes up to 1,350 air­craft worth $5.4 bil­lion. Cus­tomers include Amer­i­can Air­lines, Avolon, Bris­tow and Ibero­jet, includ­ing pre-order options from Vir­gin Atlantic and Marubeni, and through Avolon’s place­ments, air­lines JAL and Gol.

Vertical’s VX4 pilot­ed air­craft is expect­ed to have a range of more than 100 miles and to reach top speeds of up to 200mph. With a four-pas­sen­ger capac­i­ty, the zero oper­at­ing emis­sions VX4 will also have a low cost per pas­sen­ger mile, sim­i­lar to that of a taxi.