THE BIG IDEA The Electric Air Revolution
After years of hype, aviation's electric revolution has arrived. EHang's EH216 is expected to be certified this year, the first of a half-dozen electric verticaltakeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) rotorcraft planning to enter the market in 2024 and 2025. A handful of more conventionallooking electric airplanes are aiming for certification at about the same time. Development programs have been proceeding at breakneck speed for several years, with billions now being poured into the market by investors. Six of the leading companies have already gone public.
But the runway to silent, zero-carbon aircraft will have bumps. In March, Beta Technologies, one of eVTOL's early adopters, announced it was delaying the launch of its Alia-250 eVTOL and will instead seek certification for its electric conventional takeoff-and-landing (eCTOL) CX300 in 2025. The company will pursue electric flight, founder Kyle Clark told MIT Technology Review, “but in a way that doesn't require three or four miracles to happen at once,” referencing the regulatory uncertainties and technical challenges still facing the eVTOL world. (Beta is still seeking to achieve certification for the Alia-250 in 2026.)
Earlier, competitors Lilium and Joby pushed back projected certification dates to 2025, for different reasons, but there seems to be the largely unspoken belief that FAA certification might take until 2027 or 2028, because eVTOLs are unlike any other aircraft ever that “safety will dictate the certification timeline, but we could see these aircraft in the skies by 2024 or 2025”—note emphasis on “could.”
