Vertical Aerospace reveals its new eVTOL aircraft — the VA-1X

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has revealed its new fixed-wing eVTOL air­craft, the VA-1X, which is on course to start com­mer­cial flights as ear­ly as 2024.

The air­craft is the third eVTOL con­cept by the Bris­tol-based com­pa­ny, after POC and Ser­aph, and details on its web­site say the VA-1X has been designed ‘to be a high per­form­ing air­craft, able to con­nect entire regions as well as car­ry­ing out short­er mis­sions across sin­gle cities.’ 

Capa­ble of seat­ing up to five peo­ple — a pilot and four pas­sen­gers — the VA-1X fea­tures eight rotor sets, includ­ing four for­ward tilt­ing rotors. It is also set to be the world’s first cer­ti­fied all-elec­tric eVTOL air­craft, and will be tak­en through cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in Europe by the Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA).

In terms of noise, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space says the VA-1X can achieve noise lev­els 30 per cent qui­eter than a con­ven­tion­al heli­copter. It will have a cruise speed of 150mph and range of 100 miles — allow­ing a trip from Brighton to Lon­don to take just 30 min­utes — as opposed to two hours by car, or an hour by train.

Com­ment­ing on the new air­craft, Michael Cer­ven­ka, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space’s CEO, said: “With the launch of the VA-1X, we’re proud to be tak­ing eVTOL one step clos­er to mass-mar­ket adop­tion, and sup­port­ing the next era of avi­a­tion.

Ear­li­er this year, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space announced it was to devel­op its next-gen­er­a­tion of air­craft by using Das­sault Sys­tèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE plat­form on the cloud.

It will use the ‘Rein­vent the Sky‘ indus­try solu­tion expe­ri­ence to man­age the com­plex devel­op­ment of the pro­to­type by its team of 100 engi­neers and tech­ni­cal experts, even when work­ing remote­ly.  

And Hon­ey­well will sup­ply flight deck tech­nolo­gies for Ver­ti­cal Aerospace’s eVTOL demon­stra­tor air­craft pro­gramme, fol­low­ing a let­ter of intent which named the com­pa­ny as the provider of dis­plays, vehi­cle man­age­ment con­trols and oper­at­ing sys­tem

The agree­ment extends the col­lab­o­ra­tion between the two com­pa­nies, fol­low­ing an agree­ment to equip Ver­ti­cal Aerospace’s demon­stra­tor with Honeywell’s Com­pact Fly-By-Wire Sys­tem and flight con­trol soft­ware, which was signed in 2019.