Vertical Aerospace “Turning Fortunes Around”: UK Government Backs eVTOL Company

It’s been a dif­fi­cult last five months or so for the UKs lead­ing eVTOL com­pa­ny, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space (VA). An air­craft crash in August dur­ing an ear­ly test flight not only ques­tioned the Bris­tol-based firm’s abil­i­ty to bring its VX‑4 to mar­ket, but dent­ed both Stock Mar­ket and investors’ con­fi­dence with the share price on the NYSE drop­ping to below USD1 prompt­ing the U.S Exchange to warn of poten­tial exclu­sion.

A turn-a-round of VAs for­tunes began last month when Founder and CEO, Stephen Fitz­patrick, put his mon­ey where his mouth was, by invest­ing UKP50 mil­lion and this has been fol­lowed by the UK Gov­ern­ment invest­ing a fur­ther UKP8 mil­lion via a grant through the Aero­space Tech­nol­o­gy Insti­tute (ATI) Pro­gram bring­ing its total sup­port to UKP37 mil­lion, reports a press release. This award will be used to devel­op VAs next-gen­er­a­tion VX‑4 pro­pellers.

Ver­ti­cal will head a con­sor­tium of lead­ing tech­nol­o­gy organ­i­sa­tions and research insti­tu­tions includ­ing the Uni­ver­si­ties of Glas­gow, Bris­tol and Cran­field as well as Heli­tune. The grant demon­strates a sig­nif­i­cant vote of con­fi­dence in Vertical’s poten­tial to lead the next gen­er­a­tion in avi­a­tion.

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UK Indus­try Min­is­ter, Nus­rat Ghani MP, com­ment­ed, “This excit­ing sus­tain­able pro­peller project is a fan­tas­tic exam­ple of a com­mit­ment to our world-lead­ing avi­a­tion sec­tor, sup­port­ing high-skilled, high-paid jobs across the UK while devel­op­ing tech­nolo­gies of the future.” Adding, “When gov­ern­ment and indus­try col­lab­o­rate like this, we help our aero­space sec­tor soar to new heights, lead­ing the charge towards net zero air trav­el by 2050.” 

The aim is to improve the pro­pellers (a cause of the August crash) by low­er­ing their weight, iner­tia and noise, while deliv­er­ing a high­er safe­ty stan­dard than any mod­el cur­rent­ly on the mar­ket.

Stephen Fitz­patrick, Founder and CEO of Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, remarked, “With the sup­port of the ATI Pro­gram and our con­sor­tium part­ners, this project will keep the UK and Ver­ti­cal at the fore­front of aero­space inno­va­tion, elec­tric avi­a­tion and urban air mobil­i­ty.” 

The total invest­ment into the pro­peller project is almost UKP20 mil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing a con­tri­bu­tion of 50 per­cent of Vertical’s eli­gi­ble devel­op­ment costs. A fur­ther UKP3.5 mil­lion will be award­ed to the oth­er con­sor­tium mem­bers. 

Nus­rat Ghani

Mark Scul­ly, Head of ATi Tech­nol­o­gy (Propul­sion and Advanced Sys­tems), said,“The project will see advance­ments in rotor tech­nolo­gies vital to the suc­cess of eVTOL air­craft devel­oped in the UK. Through this invest­ment the ATI Pro­gram is enabling the devel­op­ment of ultra-effi­cient and cross-cut­ting tech­nolo­gies in a com­pet­i­tive glob­al mar­ket expect­ed to be worth UKP24 bil­lion to the UK up to 2050.”

The ATI Pro­gramme is co-ordi­nat­ed and man­aged by the Aero­space Tech­nol­o­gy Insti­tute, the Depart­ment for Busi­ness and Trade (DBT) and Inno­vate UK, part of UK Research and Inno­va­tion. Ver­ti­cal has pre­vi­ous­ly been award­ed UKP26m from the ATI Pro­gramme as well as UKP3m from the Future Flight Chal­lenge.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://vertical-aerospace.com/

https://www.ati.org.uk/

(Top image: Ver­ti­cal Aero­space)

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