Straight-Up Progress

The Vertical Flight Society, an international non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of vertical flight, has announced that the number of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft concepts being tracked in its World eVTOL Aircraft Directory now exceeds seven-hundred designs attributable to nearly 350 worldwide companies and innovators.

The World eVTOL Aircraft Directory’s archive is segregated by propulsion system concepts, and currently includes 235 vectored thrust architectures; 124 lift + cruise configurations; 195 wingless (multi-copter) concepts; 103 designs for hover bikes and personal flying devices; and 47 electric rotorcraft. The machines are ascribable to 347 entities in 48 countries, though the US (124 entities), UK (24), China (21), Germany (19) and Canada (17) account for nearly sixty-percent of all eVTOL design and manufacturing concerns.

The society launched the eVTOL news website in April 2017—at which time only about a dozen eVTOL concepts were known to be in development. Vertical Flight Society executive director Mike Hirschberg says of those early days: “We were pleased to create these resources to the nascent eVTOL industry six years ago. Since then, the directory exploded to catalog every known eVTOL design — from the silly to the serious.”

Over the last decade, eVTOL concepts have evolved rapidly. In only the last two-years, the cataloged number of design concepts—active and defunct—has doubled. The acceleration is evident in the accretion of milestones. The directory’s one-hundredth aircraft was cataloged in July 2018, its two-hundredth in September 2019, its three-hundredth in July 2020, five-hundredth in August 2021, and six-hundredth in January 2022.

Presently, hundreds of design teams aided by advancements in computer modeling and design tools, batteries, and electric motors, are working to actualize the exciting possibilities of vertical flight.

The increase in eVTOL concepts coincides—naturally—with a dramatic increase in the amount of funding being invested in eVTOL concerns. The Vertical Flight Society estimates eVTOL investment has increased from a 2010-2020 cumulative sum of $4.5-billion to a 2022 total of over $10-billion. The spike is attributable primarily to a number of leading eVTOL companies—namely Archer Aviation, Eve Air Mobility, Joby Aviation, Lilium, and Vertical Aerospace—going public in 2021.

The Vertical Flight Society’s tenth-annual eVTOL symposium will be held in Mesa, Arizona between 24 and 26 January 2023. The event will occur in conjunction with the society’s tenth biennial autonomous VTOL technical meeting. In addition to the aforementioned, the Vertical Flight Society will host a September 2022 workshop on Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) infrastructure in Dayton, Ohio, and a March 2023 workshop on hydrogen-powered aviation in Long Beach, California.

FMI: www.vtol.org