ZEVA’s Zero eVTOL aircraft completes first full-scale test flight, company to now embark on series of taxiing tests

ZEVA has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed its first unteth­ered, pow­ered, con­trolled flight test for its full-scale ZEVA ZERO fly­ing wing air­frame, util­is­ing its eight zero-emis­sion elec­tric motor-dri­ven pro­pellers.

The US start­up, based in Taco­ma, Wash­ing­ton, says it is bring­ing per­son­al air trans­porta­tion to every­one with its afford­able eVTOL air­craft. The major mile­stone was achieved in Pierce Coun­ty, Wash­ing­ton on Jan­u­ary 9th as part of its rig­or­ous test pro­gramme to achieve FAA air­wor­thi­ness cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

The uncrewed ZEVA demon­stra­tion air­craft com­plet­ed four flights, totalling more than four min­utes of con­trolled hov­er­ing, sim­u­lat­ed taxi­ing manoeu­vres at slow speeds and lim­it­ed ver­ti­cal climb manoeu­vres. Its com­pact air­frame is designed for a sin­gle pilot and small enough to fit in a stan­dard auto­mo­bile park­ing space. The vehi­cle is pro­ject­ed to cruise at speeds of up to 160 mph with a range of up to 50 miles, opti­mis­ing point-to-point trav­el.

Stephen Tib­bitts, CEO and Chair­man of ZEVA, said: “This is a huge inflec­tion point for ZEVA as we join an exclu­sive set of proven fly­ing eVTOL plat­forms, and a tes­ta­ment to the relent­less hard work and inge­nu­ity of our entire team over the past two and half years.

“We are dis­sect­ing our learn­ings from our crit­i­cal first taxi­ing flight, which is a direct result of the sup­port we’ve received from our investors and com­mu­ni­ty, lead­ing us to bring in addi­tion­al tal­ent to spear­head this his­toric moment. We are eager to con­tin­ue to our next stage of hov­er flight test­ing on our road to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and even­tu­al autonomous flight allow­ing any­one, not just pilots, to access zero-emis­sion point-to-point trav­el.”

ZEVA expe­ri­enced tremen­dous growth in 2021, with the addi­tion of Gus Mey­er as flight con­trol engi­neer and sev­er­al oth­er key hires. The team com­plet­ed more than 50 suc­cess­ful teth­ered flights, show­cased the ZEVA ZERO air­craft at the Dubai Air Show in Novem­ber and was award­ed a grant by Washington’s Joint Cen­ter for Aero­space Tech­nol­o­gy Inno­va­tion (JCATI).

This will see them work with Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty on ZEVA Aero’s aero­dy­nam­ic con­fig­u­ra­tions to opti­mise the vehicle’s thrust and con­trols. ZEVA has also worked with NASA in con­junc­tion with its Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Grand Chal­lenge.

ZEVA will con­tin­ue hov­er flight tests and advance to tran­si­tion flight test­ing this spring to fine-tune the unique Super­man-like tra­jec­to­ry of the air­craft design. The patent-pend­ing design is expect­ed to be avail­able for pre-order for con­sumers for a $5,000 deposit as ear­ly as spring of this year, with an even­tu­al price tag for the first pro­duc­tion units esti­mat­ed at under $250,000.

Mey­er, who is the test pilot con­trol­ling the ZERO via a remote radio link, added: “The ZEVA team has done an incred­i­ble job with the design and man­u­fac­tur­ing of this air­craft, which was evi­denced in this excep­tion­al­ly smooth and suc­cess­ful first flight. “This achieve­ment is also a tes­ta­ment to the extra­or­di­nary tal­ent and expe­ri­ence of the team, and the sup­port­ive part­ner­ships that helped make this a real­i­ty.”

To learn more about ZEVA, you can vis­it its equi­ty crowd­fund­ing cam­paign on StartEngine.