ePlane Unveils Full-scale e200X eVTOL Prototype

This week, The ePlane Company unveiled the first full-scale prototype of its e200X eVTOL aircraft, moving the Chennai, India-based startup from subscale demonstrators toward flight testing with a certified configuration. ePlane said the PT-01 prototype will undergo ground testing before advancing to full-scale flight trials.

An aerospace venture incubated at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (and operating as Ubifly Technologies), The ePlane Company revealed the prototype, designated PT-01, at a newly opened 60,000-sq-ft production facility in Chennai. ePlane said the milestone follows the design organization approval it received from India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in 2023 and positions it to begin flight trials targeted for mid-2027.

Built entirely from carbon-fiber composite, the e200X occupies an 8- by 11-meter (about 26- by 36-foot) footprint within a 2,200-kilogram (4,850-pound) maximum gross weight class. ePlane characterizes the airframe as among the most compact of any winged eVTOL developed to date—a form factor the company says is intended to operate from existing infrastructure such as helipads and open lots rather than purpose-built vertiports.

In its passenger configuration, the aircraft carries a pilot plus 200 kilograms of payload, equivalent to two passengers, with a stated operational range of 110 kilometers. Power comes from an 800-volt distributed electric propulsion system in which each motor is wired independently to the battery, an arrangement the company says removes single points of failure. The design uses what ePlane calls a patented “Synergistic Lift” wing architecture, dedicating separate propulsion units to vertical lift and forward cruise while keeping all rotors fixed rather than employing the tilting rotors of some competing configurations. ePlane said the underlying patent, filed in 2019, has been granted in more than 30 countries.

According to the company, the e200X has secured commitments for more than 800 aircraft, with a substantial share tied to emergency medical transport, where ePlane says the aircraft could move trauma patients faster than road transport allows.

The aircraft integrates Nvidia’s IGX Thor platform for sensor fusion across cameras, lidar, and radar; navigation hardware supplied by Germany’s Hensoldt; and battery-management software developed by Tata Consultancy Services. ePlane said it used Nvidia’s Omniverse platform to build a digital twin of the aircraft for virtual validation ahead of physical testing.

The e200X follows two progressively larger subscale platforms—a one-fifth-scale demonstrator called ATVA and a 50-kilogram-payload, heavy-lift drone designated e50—that together have logged more than 10,000 cumulative kilometers of test flights.

“PT-01 shifts us from subscale testing straight into full-scale validation,” said Satya Chakravarthy, ePlane’s founder and technical lead and a professor at IIT Madras. “The e50 heavy-lift drone completed flight trials and maneuvers that validated the scaling learnings we’re now carrying into this aircraft.”

Founded in 2019, The ePlane Company has raised $21.5 million to date from investors including Speciale Invest, Antares Ventures, and Naval Ravikant. Its board includes Aditya Ghosh, former CEO of IndiGo and co-founder of Akasa Air, and Eash Sundaram, former chief digital and technology officer at JetBlue Airways.

The company describes the e200X as the first eVTOL accepted into the DGCA’s type-certification pipeline.