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How vertical-lift aviation is continuing to pursue a more environmentally-friendly future.
An enormous cash pyre continues to fuel vertical aviation’s promise of a green energy future. Collectively, the top 10 eVTOL companies have burned through an estimated $12 billion — four times what was lost during the very light jet craze of the late 1990s, and six times Boeing’s current annual profit. Almost monthly, an eVTOL company announces another massive cash infusion. In January, it was Eve Air Mobility, the $1.2 billion — so far — Embraer spin-off, trumpeting a new $150 million inflow of “debt financing” from a syndicate of participants from Brazil and Japan.
Indeed, the big eVTOL players have individually run up “accumulated deficits” that are simply staggering; Joby, $2.66 billion; Archer, $1.8 billion; Vertical Aerospace, $1.5 billion; and Lilium, $1.5 billion (before the lights were turned off on the latter via insolvency and it became a parts and pieces sale). Quarterly losses for each of the big players are in the $100 million to $400 million range. And that’s not taking into account the massive future investment required for serial production to achieve the economies of scale needed to make these flying air taxis “Uber in the sky.”
Confronted with this unappetizing math, two big players, Airbus and Textron, the latter the parent of Bell, have effectively withdrawn from the eVTOL sweepstakes. In January 2025, Airbus shelved its decade-old CityAirbus program, noting that the necessary battery technology and market conditions sufficient to support a product launch were “not necessarily there yet.”
“We clearly see on the battery side the need to continue to improve the performance to reach what we consider the minimum level of performance and mission,” said Airbus Helicopters’ then-CEO Bruno Even.
Similarly, Textron announced the elimination of its eAviation division in October 2025 after pausing/slowing down its Nexus eVTOL program in July. The division had recently posted quarterly losses of $15 million.
Nevertheless, despite technological and market concerns, the cash spigot remains on for the leading eVTOL companies, driven in part by investors motivated by recent enormous compound annual growth rate (CAGR) predictions between now and 2033 — anywhere from 12% to 55%. But in the U.S. at least, much of this hinges on the performance and speed of regulators.
To that end, in September 2025, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced its Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) Integration Pilot Program (aka eIPP) — a three-year public-private cooperative program designed to speed safe integration of eVTOLs into the National Airspace System (NAS).
