eVTOL – a 'Wright Brothers' moment, but concerns remain over certification, financing, acceptance

Posted 12/09/2025 00:27

Now 122 years after the Wright Brother's achieved the first successful powered, controlled, and sustained flight in a heavier-than-air aircraft, an eVTOL (electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing) aircraft flew between two airports in California - for the first time in recorded history.

Perhaps more should have been made of it in the media, because apart from the advent of the turboprop powered aircraft, the helicopter, then the jet engine, the widebody commercial aircraft, Concorde, fly-by-wire and carbon fibre/composite aircraft - there have been few more significant moments in aviation history.

But the world isn't the eVTOLs oyster just yet, apart maybe for the military.

For example, eVTOLs are a lot heavier than air than the 'Wright Flyer' was. That matters for road vehicles, but a lot more so for an aircraft, and until batteries are much lighter it will remain an issue.

And it is one of the reasons that 'hybrid' versions of eVTOLs are already under production; the environmentalists nightmare (and aren't we going to know all about it)?

Technical matters are not the only issue, by any means. There are deep concerns about certification, financing and public image and acceptance of these vehicles.

And much the same applies to the legions of 'vertiports' that are being planned to house them.

And what exactly can they do that helicopters can't?

These and other questions come under the spotlight in this report.

Summary

A 'Wright Brothers' moment? The first claimed air taxi flight from one airport to another takes place,
The leading eVTOL manufacturers are concentrated in the US, but not exclusively,
It’s a fraught business financially,
There is a dichotomy between technical expertise and financial performance at some of the manufacturers,
The dream remains, though, and is within touching distance,
Financial performance is not the only concern; take certification…
Watch out below for the downdraught!
Range remains an issue, can ‘hybrid’ come to the rescue?
Adding wings and diesel propulsion!
But eVTOLs with wings are just hybrid fixed wing aircraft, right?
The cash keeps coming, but the manufacturers are diminishing.
The operating model isn’t operating that well.
Heading to the Gulf for final testing.
Investors are rightly very wary.
The military is often the go-to outlet.
The need for vertiports is also called into question.

A 'Wright Brothers' moment? The first claimed air taxi flight from one airport to another takes place

In mid-Aug-2025 Joby Aviation, a US venture-backed aviation company that is developing an electric vertical take off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft (that it intends to operate as an air taxi service), conducted a flight with its eVTOL air taxi aircraft from Marina Municipal Airport to Monterey Regional Airport.

The flight included vertical take off, a transition to wing-borne flight, integration into controlled airspace around Monterey, and vertical landing.

First Piloted eVTOL Air Taxi Flight Between Two Public Airports

Source: Joby Aviation.

Joby Aviation stated that the flight was "the first time a piloted eVTOL air taxi has flown from one public airport to another" although that might be disputed by other manufacturers that made such flights at a similar time and depending what interpretation of 'public airport' is used.

The company plans to begin flight testing with US FAA pilots in early 2026. Following certification, Joby intends to launch commercial services in Los Angeles and New York City.

Joby Aviation is headquartered in Santa Cruz, California and has offices in: San Carlos, California; Marina, California; and Munich, Germany.

The leading eVTOL manufacturers are concentrated in the US, but not exclusively...

There are a number of companies involved in the manufacture of eVTOLs for passenger or cargo use, and they are considered to represent the cutting edge of urban air mobility technology.

These are some of the leading companies:

Joby Aviation

Notable aircraft: Joby S4
Specifications: 150-mile range, 200 mph cruise speed, capacity for one pilot and four passengers.
Partnerships: has secured partnerships with major airlines.
Founded in 2009 by JoeBen Bevirt.

Archer Aviation

Notable developments: completed assembly of its first 'Midnight' eVTOL aircraft,
Business model: plans to establish an electric aerial ridesharing service (like, say, Uber),
Partnerships: secured a 200-aircraft preorder from United Airlines,
Manufacturing: partnered with Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler) for manufacturing expertise,
Target application: routes like New York Newark Liberty Airport to Manhattan (reducing 1+ hour drive to c. 8 minutes).

Archer has released a map of its planned Manhattan vertiports to serve JFK, LGA, EWR, as well as Teterboro in New Jersey and Republic Airport on Long Island. The system would rely on three existing heliports in Manhattan.

Vertical Aerospace

Headquarters: Bristol, England, UK.
Notable aircraft: VX4.
Specifications: zero-emission, 200 mph top speed, 100+ mile range, and capacity for five people.
Partnerships: American Airlines and Virgin Atlantic.
Plans to launch commercial services in the UK and Europe in 2025.

EHang Holdings Limited

Headquarters: Guangzhou, China.
Founded: 2014.
Notable aircraft: EHang 216 (autonomous passenger drone).
Applications: urban air mobility, logistics, and emergency response.
Achievements: conducted test flights in multiple countries and secured regulatory approvals.

China has licensed EHang to carry passengers in what is apparently the first such licence anywhere in the world. EHang plans to start commercial flights soon in Guangzhou and Hefei. Drone deliveries are becoming widespread in China.

Beta Technologies

Headquarters: Vermont, USA.
Focus: eVTOL aircraft for cargo and logistics.
Notable aircraft: ALIA-250.
Specifications: 250-mile range, capacity to carry up to 1,400 pounds of cargo.

General Motors

Headquarters: Detroit, Michigan, USA.
Notable development: Concept Cadillac eVTOL air taxi (unveiled in 2021).
Concept: personal aircraft/passenger drone.

Elroy Air

Headquarters: San Francisco, California, USA.
Focus: autonomous cargo aircraft for urban air mobility and freight logistics.
Notable aircraft: The Chaparral.
Partnerships: secured partnerships with major logistics companies.

... with big named supporting companies

The eVTOL industry continues to evolve rapidly, with these companies especially leading the charge toward revolutionising urban air mobility with sustainable and efficient air transport solutions.

These are two of the leading companies supporting the arrival of eVTOLs:

Honeywell

Role: provides avionics systems for multiple eVTOL manufacturers.
Partnerships: working with Hyundai's Supernal on air taxi avionics.
Advantage: aerospace pedigree and global support network.

Rolls-Royce

Role: provides electric propulsion systems.
Notable partnership: working with Vertical Aerospace.

A fraught business financially

It does, though, remain a business fraught with risks.

While it's not-yet-certified S4 made its first piloted transition from vertical to forward flight in late Apr-2025, Joby Aviation, for example, is navigating through turbulent financial waters.

The release of its 2Q2025 earnings report revealed a loss of USD0.41 per share, a large increase from the previous year's loss, and the figure was far from expectations; leaving investor confidence dented, although some traders appear to have stuck with it.

The difficulty lies in the company's financial ratios. Joby's price-to-sales ratio sits very high, highlighting inflated market expectations that may be difficult to maintain without substantial revenue increases.

The gross margin, at 77.6%, reveals potential profitability if Joby manages to ramp up its production. There is strong liquidity, indicating it can meet short term obligations, despite its current losses, which are challenging analysts to provide positive reporting on it.

There is a dichotomy between technical expertise and financial performance at some of the manufacturers

These developments highlight the difficult imbalance between the company's pioneering technological promise and its current financial underperformance.

With the eVTOL industry's competitive landscape boiling up, Joby's situation illustrates a balancing act between exciting advancements in technology and confronting demanding economic realities.

The dream remains, and is within touching distance

Yet these hurdles don't hide Joby's ground-breaking strides in urban air mobility.

The dream of air taxis transforming cityscapes remains enticing, and should the company bridge the gap between innovation and fiscal prudence, it could redefine transportation.

Joby is respected as one of few eVTOL start-ups that are likely to achieve FAA certification within a few years and begin commercial operations.

In a surprise move recently - Joby acquired the long-time commercial helicopter operator Blade Air Mobility as a way of reducing risk on market-entry plans.

Blade has operating certificates in the US, and also in Canada and southern Europe. It carried 50,000 passengers last year and has access to landing sites and terminals in key cities, saving Joby much money and time as it aims to begin eVTOL operations within a short time.

And since it will own Blade from now on, it will have an additional source of revenue during its first years of eVTOL operations. Blade has also agreed that Joby will be its eVTOL partner for its profitable medical organ transport business (which Blade is retaining).

But Blade is believed to lose money on passenger trips while making good money on medical services, and Joby is only buying the passenger business.

Blade owns very little in terms of hard assets.

Financial performance is not the only concern; take certification…

But there are other issues to take into account across the board for all operators in this segment.

As of Aug-2025, no piloted eVTOL has yet received FAA certification. It seems likely that this multi-year process will take longer for automated eVTOLs than for their piloted counterparts from Archer and Joby.

The only US eVTOL start-up that is planning for autonomous commercial passenger flights has announced plans to begin operating them in Houston, Los Angeles, and Miami by 2030. Four-passenger eVTOLs will be both produced and operated by 'Wisk', which is partly owned by Boeing.

It isn't clear where it stands in the certification process.

Watch out below!

Field tests and modelling have demonstrated high-velocity downwash of up to 35 mph, posing a hazard to people and objects on the ground.

An Australian vertiport designer, Skyportz, has received a provisional patent for a design that would mitigate these effects.

In the US, an FAA Engineering Brief requires downwash caution areas (DCAs) to be established anywhere that wind velocities could exceed 34.5 mph.

Range remains an issue, can 'hybrid' come to the rescue?

There is also the question of how far eVTOLs can fly, mirroring concerns about battery-powered road vehicles that are still well short on range compared to fossil fuel-driven ones.

Numerous attempts are being made to circumvent these issues.

For example, Beta Technologies has two hybrid eVTOL aircraft under development. One that has flown is an Alia A250 eVTOL with a range extension kit installed.

The kit consists of a diesel-fuelled generator that allows the A250 to ferry itself, operating as a conventional take off and landing (CTOL) craft with up to a 3,000-mile range.

Archer has also entered a partnership to develop next-generation aircraft, including a hybrid eVTOL.

And Joby is also developing a hybrid eVTOL, with a hydrogen fuel cell as its range extender: in Jul-2024, Joby flew one of its S4 eVTOLs with such a fuel cell for 561 miles.

Adding wings and diesel propulsion!

Another approach that is catching on is short-take off electric hybrids (STOLs) and electric aircraft with conventional take off and landing (CTOLs).

Electra Aero's EL2 is a hybrid with a "blown" wing (with enhanced airflow) that takes off in just 150 feet of runway. The company has also designed a successor: the nine-passenger EL9, aimed at defence missions.

There is a large array of companies aiming to produce and test mostly hybrid regional aircraft (for cargo and/or passengers), with up to 15 such projects, half of them battery only and the others hybrids.

By not including vertical take off and landing, the battery CTOLs are projected to have ranges between 400 and 800 miles (640 and 1,280 km), thanks to the major energy savings from avoiding vertical flight.

Projected ranges for the hybrid versions are from 800 to 1,670 miles (for the Aura Aero EVA). That company, based in Toulouse (France), plans to use two turbo-generators to charge batteries to power eight wing-mounted engines for this 19-passenger CTOL.

These changes and amendments highlight the severe limitations in payload and range of 'traditional' eVTOLs. What these newer companies (nearly all of them are start-ups) are seeking to do is to retain the aura of electric power with the addition of wings and range extenders based on either hydrogen or fossil fuel.

These might be a good fit for some military operations and might find market niches in certain low-passenger regional operations, or they might not.

But eVTOLs with wings are just hybrid fixed wing aircraft?

But the catch is obvious.

Just as 'full service/legacy' and 'low-cost' airline operating models almost inevitably began to merge into an amorphous mass, and electric cars rapidly found benefits in hybridity with other methods of propulsion, so there is a coming together already of 'pure' electrically operated eVTOLs and dual propulsion models before an eVTOL has made a commercial fare-paying flight.

The 'futuristic' image of the eVTOL is therefore under threat, as they can now be perceived by the public as being radically no different than the attempts to develop electric or hydrogen operated fixed-wing aircraft, which everyone expects to end up as hybrids anyway. They are inevitably heading towards each other on the same flight path.

And that perception will be multiplied many times over in the minds of the green lobby.

The cash keeps coming, but the manufacturers are diminishing in number

These are perhaps some of the reasons why the eVTOL revolution has stalled.

In recent years non-China-based investors have poured USD13 billion into start-up eVTOL companies, with not much to show for it.

But of that USD13 billion, USD10 billion was raised by the three US-based start-ups: Archer, Beta, and Joby. The remaining USD3 billion was split among some 57 companies.

The 'Big Three' have flying prototypes or near-production models and are in the early stages of working with the FAA on type certification.

But the best-known players elsewhere, especially in Europe, are dwindling.

Munich-based Lilium twice filed for bankruptcy, in Oct-2024 and Feb-2025. In Aug-2025, a Dutch firm called Ambitious Air Mobility Group (AAMG) expressed interest in acquiring Lilium's assets. AAMG has offered EUR20 million for those assets and claims to have secured EUR250 million with access to an additional EUR500 million to revitalise the programme, but no purchase agreement has been concluded, and no money has been transferred.

The bankruptcy represents a significant setback for what was once a promising eVTOL that had been valued in billions of Euros.

Meanwhile, Volocopter GmbH, also based in Germany, filed for insolvency on 26-Dec-2024. In Mar-2025 Volocopter was acquired by Wanfeng Group, the Chinese owner of Diamond Aircraft, having laid off all its employees.

This acquisition effectively rescued the company from bankruptcy. Diamond Aircraft is now integrating Volocopter into its operations.

The company will maintain its brand identity, despite the acquisition, and is resuming the certification path for its eVTOL aircraft, with the integration with Diamond Aircraft expected to help Volocopter reduce costs.

Airbus put its City Airbus project on indefinite hold in Feb-2025, deeming that today's battery technology was inadequate to meet its requirement for range and endurance.

The UK's Vertical Aerospace managed to raise USD60 million through a public offer, following USD50 million in 2024 from a new investor, giving it enough working capital through to mid-2026. But whether it can raise enough additional funding to get certified remains an open question.

The operating model isn't operating that well

One mistake made by many start-ups was not devising a realistic operating model, with the right amount of passenger capacity and range to support a large enough market niche.

Another appears to be an unrealistic estimation of both the cost and time needed to gain FAA or European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) certification. Batteries are very heavy compared with aviation fuel. And vertical take off is very energy-intensive.

How much, and how long, will it take for Archer, Beta, and Joby - not only to achieve FAA certification, but to find viable market niches for more than a handful of aircraft?

One consultant estimates that Archer and Joby will enter FAA Type Inspection Authority for flight testing within a year, and achieve type certification in 1Q2027, and actually launch service in the second quarter of 2028; and under a best-case scenario - by 2Q2027.

Some certification experts are concerned that even these best-funded start-ups have been unrealistic about the time and cost of certification, and that those dates seem to be most realistic.

Heading to the Gulf for final testing

Both Archer and Joby have been reported to be planning to jump-start things in the Middle East.

Before receiving FAA certification, Archer planned to begin test flights of its Midnight eVTOL in Abu Dhabi, and started in Jul-2025 at a converted heliport.

Abu Dhabi is planned to be the first market in the world where Archer will launch commercial operations.

The company is working with the UAE authorities to secure full approvals from the General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) before commercial services begin.

Joby had the same notion, focusing on Dubai, using its S4 air taxi, and starting in Jun-2025.

The testing is taking place at a small airport located approximately 50 km southeast of Dubai.

These Dubai tests are focused on validating the aircraft's performance in extreme environmental conditions. Joby is gradually increasing the duration, distance, and complexity of flight patterns over several months

Joby still hopes to begin commercial service there in late 2025 or early 2026.

Investors are rightly very wary

But we have to remain realistic.

Neither Archer nor Joby has rolled out a fully conforming aircraft yet that has been certified in western environments.

Investors are wide awake to the reality that eVTOL commercial service is still likely years away.

It really is like asking them to put their money on an entire global industry on the basis of that first ever 12-second, 35 yard flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Not that the air transport business has turned out to be a failure, mind.

The two videos below portray these momentous events in aviation history.

The Wright Brothers first controlled, sustained flight of an engine-powered, heavier-than-air aircraft

Source: British Pathé.

The military is often the go-to outlet

So, is there genuinely a future for eVTOLs in commercial aviation?

Or might they ultimately be used more for the military? After all, look at the development of drone warfare in Ukraine. That is one of several new ways in which wars will be fought in the future.

Under its AFWerx program, the US Air Force has been funding several leading US eVTOL companies to test their products for delivering cargo to troops in the field.

But even then its 'Agility Prime' programme appears to have concluded that battery-electric eVTOLs have neither the range nor the payload to be viable for such cargo deliveries. Hence, its contractors-Archer, Beta, and Joby- are now working on (again) hybrid eVTOLs!

The need for vertiports is also called into question

The whole eVTOL idea has always struck many industry observers as being questionable, both technologically and economically. What can this much heavier air vehicle do better than helicopters for example?

We're still waiting for the answer.

Accordingly, investing in networks of vertiports to host the eVTOLs must be premature, too, which will be the subject of a future CAPA - Centre for Aviation report.