FutureFlight

EHang's EH216 eVTOL aircraft, plus some of its Falcon B drones, are being used for missions such as aerial logistics, emergency transportation, inspections, broadcasting, and deliveries in Covid quarantine and containment zones in China's Guangdong province. The Chinese manufacturer has deployed an operations team to support local officials from the city of Guangzhou.

The partnership between eVTOL aircraft developer Eve Urban Air Mobility Services and online flight booking platform Ascent is intended to prepare an ecosystem of supporting air taxi and other services, including potentially emergency medical support and cargo delivery.

By merging with a special purpose acquisition company called Zanite, Eve Urban Air Mobility Solutions could raise fresh capital to support efforts to bring a new four-passenger eVTOL aircraft into service in 2026. Nasdaq-listed Zanite was launched by business aviation entrepreneur Kenn Ricci, whose OneSky Flight venture recently committed to ordering up to 200 of the all-electric aircraft.

The provisional orders for up to 1,000 of Vertical Aerospace's VA-X4 eVTOL represent the largest sales commitments so far in the advanced air mobility sector. The UK company's merger with Broadstone is expected to generate $394 million and value the start-up at up to $2.2 billion.

Clint Harper, a fellow at the Los Angeles Department of Transportation's Urban Movement Labs, is working with the local community and urban air mobility stakeholders to address issues involved with adding urban air mobility to the public transportation mix. In 2020, the city's mayor, Eric Garcetti, established a public-private partnership to prepare the way for eVTOL air taxi services to launch from around 2024.

Archer's engineering team will use the Maker to complete development work on a four-passenger eVTOL aircraft that it plans to employ for urban air taxi services starting in 2024. It unveiled the technology demonstrator during an event at Hawthorne Airport in Los Angeles, presenting extended-reality simulations of how the all-electric aircraft will operate in cities.

Honeywell's engineering team has been developing flight controls and avionics for Lilium's seven-seat eVTOL aircraft for the past 18 months and is already supplying equipment for an iron-bird ground test rig. The flight control system will have triple redundancy so that if one set of sensors fail, the other two units will take full control. Lilium expects to fly a full-conforming prototype in 2022 and have the aircraft in commercial service before the end of 2024.

Electric Power Systems has developed the new Epic Energy, Power, and Ultra battery modules to fit a variety of eVTOL and fixed-wing aircraft applications. The batteries offer thermal runaway safety protection, as well as improved discharge and charging rates. Initial customers are expected to take delivery of early units before the end of 2021, with the batteries expected to be approved under technical standard orders in 2022.

Electra's hybrid-electric short takeoff and landing aircraft will be operated by a single pilot and carry up to seven passengers on regional services. Using the company's "blown lift" technology, the aircraft will be able to take off and land at speeds as low as 30 mph, meaning that it will be able to operate from little more than 100 feet of runway. Electra aims to start flight testing a technology demonstrator before the end of 2021.

Airflow's fixed-wing hybrid-electric short takeoff and landing aircraft is expected to be able to operate from runways as short as 150 to 200 feet when it enters service in 2025. The company says that it now has an order book worth more than $200 million, including commitments for 50 aircraft from U.S. regional airline Ravn Alaska. The aircraft will be powered by a hybrid-electric propulsion system developed by VerdeGo Aero.