While electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles (e-VTOLs) have been hailed as a game-changing short-haul mobility option, for speedy and green trips between airports and city centres for example, a number of Europe’s so-called “flying taxi” firms are running out of cash as the cost and delays involved in regulatory frameworks and manufacturing set-ups is deterring investors, industry commentators are noting.
German e-VTOL developer Volocopter is now in talks with Chinese automotive giant Geely, after failing to secure a €100m government loan earlier this year. A lengthy search for investors has forced the Bruchsal headquartered manufacturer to scale back ambitions to debut its “safe, quiet and sustainable” flying taxi services at the Paris Olympics. It had to settle instead for a demo.
If Geely takes the hoped-for 85% stake in Volocopter in return for $95m (€90m) of funding, there is a strong chance manufacturing will be moved to China.
Similarly, fellow German firm Lillium had been working on an unusual e-VTOL called Lillium. Many e-VTOLs resemble helicopters, but Lillium had wings as well as 30 electric jets that could be tilted simultaneously to swing between vertical lift and forward flight.
Claims of hundreds of orders and buoyant CEO talk of “burning through cash” to produce three aircraft by the end of the year, and €1.5bn raised have come to nothing. It filed for bankruptcy early in November 2024, though it too continues to seek a financial rescue.
British firm Vertical Aerospace is another e-VTOL firm on the rocks. Though it has completed promising test flights with its VX4 craft this year and has a delivery of 150 aircraft due by 2030, it has also had a prototype accident and seen Rolls Royce pull out of a motor-supply deal. What’s more, it recently had to be bailed out by its biggest creditor, Mudrick Capital, to the tune of $50m, with $130m of loans converted into shares, taking the US financier’s stake in the company to 70%.
Still, successful players remain in the field, including Joby and Archer in the United States, and in Europe, Airbus’s “CityAirbus NextGen” appears on track and has been described as “a technology project for their engineers, and they’ve got the money, and they’ve got the know how,” according to Swedish aerospace consultant Bjorn Fehrm, reported by the BBC.
Do they have the market though? That remains the question on many investors’ and potential flyers’ minds.
