eVTOL lawsuits threaten U.S. launch certification amid testing push

Air taxi makers have hyped science fiction-like flying cars for years. But as that dream inches closer to reality, legal squabbles are clouding that momentum.

Last year, Joby Aviation sued Archer, accusing the rival air taxi maker of “corporate espionage” and using stolen information to interfere with a real estate developer deal.

Weeks later, Archer clapped back, alleging that Joby hid ties to China and embarked on a “calculated, years-long scheme” to defraud the U.S. government. The plan, Archer claimed, included classifying China aircraft parts as consumer goods such as “hair clips” and “socks.”

Simultaneously, another battle was brewing.

Archer hit Vertical Aerospace with a patent infringement suit, claiming the British air taxi maker ripped off its Midnight aircraft. Vertical called the lawsuit “without merit” and said it “will defend those claims vigorously” in a statement to CNBC.

Both cases are working their way through the courts.

“Investors are going to look at things going awry, the resources that are being spent on those lawsuits, and they’re going to turn away from the sector,” Beta Technologies CEO Kyle Clark told CNBC in an interview. “If Joby, Archer, Vertical and Eve go down, we’re going to go down with them.”

So far this year, investors seem less than impressed with the makers of electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, known as eVTOLs for short.

Archer is down 9% and has lost more than a third of its value over the last year. Vertical has shed about half its market value after plummeting nearly 58% in 2025.

Eve has lost about 13% of its market capitalization this year, while Beta Technologies, which went public in November, is down more than 50% from its first close. Joby’s stock has lost nearly 7% in 2026 following a 60% run up last year.

Meanwhile, certification timelines have been perpetually pushed back as the buildout for flying cars, which promise to curb emissions and traffic, takes longer to pan out in the U.S.

President Donald Trump’s plans to accelerate development through an eVTOL Integration Pilot Program are giving the sector much-needed validation, but heated battles unfolding in the courtroom threaten to sidetrack those dreams and further sour investor appetite.

“If the industry continues to sue each other, then it’s going to drag out certification timelines and increase costs,” warned Mike Hirschberg, principal at aviation advisory firm H2 Advisors.

The Trump push

Last summer, President Donald Trump handed a major win to the air taxi industry when he signed an executive order to create a testing program.

The announcement coincided with a new drone dominance program and “assert U.S. leadership in emerging aviation sectors” as his administration pushes to reindustrialize the military and scale innovation.

Air taxi makers, which have long worked with defense contractors, took the news in stride, reading the announcement as a way to fast-track approval and accelerate adoption for tech that’s taken years to come to fruition.

“This is kind of like our Waymo moment,” said Archer CEO Adam Goldstein. “This is our chance to showcase all this stuff.”

The administration got to work quickly.

By September, the Department of Transportation launched a program and in March named 26 states participating in the first phase. Testing is expected to start this summer.

“The INNOVATION we are seeing in America’s skies is going to change everything,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote on social media platform X shortly after the department unveiled pilot program participants.

While electric aircraft players have hit the skies, none have successfully flown commercial passengers in the U.S. The biggest hurdle is achieving Federal Aviation Administration certification.

Before they can legally fly passengers, the governing aviation body requires air taxi makers to pass a “rigorous, multi-phase aircraft certification process that starts with a familiarization briefing and ends with the FAA issuing type and production certificates,” a spokesperson from the FAA wrote in an email statement.

The spokesperson referred CNBC to the agency’s certification page, which includes steps for assessing designs and verifying aircraft quality.

One major hurdle for eVTOLs is what’s known as Type Certification, or the official approval of an aircraft’s design and parts.

Most recently, Archer said it finished Phase 3 of this process and is concurrently working on Phase 4. Joby is most of the way through Phase 4 and has begun flight testing its first FAA-conforming aircraft for Type Certification. Vertical’s certification is through the European Union Aviation Safety Agency and Eve is working with Brazil’s National Civil Aviation Agency. 

The FAA said it’s working closely with four other regulators on advanced air mobility.

As certification edges closer, some investors are getting impatient.

But Angelo Collins, executive director of the Vertical Flight Society, said betting on the first to market isn’t necessarily the best strategy.

“At the end of the day, the quality of the product should matter more than the date of the certification,” he said. “That’s what I think all us engineers know, but at the end of the day, investors are kind of clueless.”

Building out the infrastructure, like charging equipment and vertiports for takeoff and landing, is another barrier to mass U.S. adoption, and one air taxi makers hope to kickstart through Trump’s pilot.

Progress and funding

Last year, Joby became the first air taxi maker to complete a full flight transition from vertical to cruise flight, a significant step in the process toward FAA certification.

“If you can demonstrate this shift, you’re well on your way to certification,” said Austin Moeller, a tech and defense analyst at Canaccord.

Founded in 2009 by JoeBen Bevirt, Joby, alongside Archer, has captured the attention of retail investors. That’s also made shares susceptible to wide swings, and the ire of investors.

Earlier this month, Joby launched a massive campaign in New York City that included the city’s first-ever point-to-point eVTOL flight and offered onlookers on Manhattan’s West Side a close-up.

Over the last decade and a half, the company has also accrued a growing list of partners that includes ridesharing giant Uber. Japanese automaker Toyota has given $894 million to the eVTOL maker and announced a $500 million investment in 2024.

Archer and Joby are establishing significant footprints already with bets in the Middle East, where regulators and governments have readily embraced the new tech. Joby’s deals include an exclusive six-year partnership to operate air taxi services in Dubai

Like many of its eVTOL peers, Joby went public through a special purpose acquisition merger at the height of the craze in 2021. Bevirt told CNBC at the Farnborough International Airshow in 2022 that Joby planned to operate air taxis in 2024. In recent years, the company hasn’t provided an official update.

“We aren’t projecting dates, because it’s not entirely within our control,” Eric Allison, Joby’s chief product officer, told CNBC in an interview. “This is a regulated process, and so we have to do the steps and the FAA has to respond.”

Earlier this year, the company was approved for five of the eight Trump pilot testing programs. Joby expects to start flying passengers in demonstrations as soon as this year, which will build more confidence in the aircraft as it works toward certification, Allison said.

In April, Vertical became the second eVTOL maker to successfully transition from helicopter to airplane mode. The company, which is vying for certification under the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, wants to get certified for passenger flights by 2028 — and executives have fiercely stood by that goal.

“Everyone looked at us like we were a complete outlier,” said CEO Stuart Simpson. “It’s stretching, it’s challenging, but we believe we can get there.”

Archer, the second-largest player by market value, was founded in 2018 by entrepreneurs Goldstein and Brett Adcock, who previously founded hiring marketplace startup Vettery.

The company unveiled its first aircraft, known as Maker, in 2021 and its flagship product, Midnight, the following year.

Former co-CEO Adcock, who now leads Nvidia-backed robotics startup Figure AI, told CNBC in 2021 that the company was working with the FAA toward certification by 2024. Two years later, Goldstein said Archer plans to “start commercialization in 2025.”

Those dates have passed, but the company now faces a 2028 deadline as it seeks to jet passengers across Los Angeles as an official partner of the Olympics.

Archer is scaling for the mega sporting event and attempting to build an operational hub for the area’s impending air taxi network. The company recently paid $126 million for Hawthorne Airport, within close range of bustling Los Angeles International Airport.

Last year, the company also bought around 300 battery, flight control and propeller patents from now-defunct air taxi maker Lilium.

Eve Mobility is one of the companies betting on a slow but steady crawl to flying passengers. The upstart from Brazilian jet maker Embraer has signed deals with United Airlines and previously said it plans to enter service by 2027.

“We don’t want to be the first one,” said CEO Johann Bordais. “We want to be the right one.”

Beta’s Clark said he’s undertaking a “stepwise approach” to certification that starts with defense, logistics, and medical services before tackling passengers. He said Beta’s simpler aircraft relative to competitors will simplify the certification process.

“We’re going up these steps in a thoughtful, methodical way, instead of trying to jump to the second floor in one leap,” he said.

In March, Beta was selected for seven of the eight eVTOL Integration Pilot Program spots — the most out of any aircraft maker. The company is also known for its parts business, which includes motors and charging, and has struck deals with competitors including Eve Air and Archer.

Beta makes two aircrafts, including an eVTOL, and is aiming to get certified in 2028. It’s also working on an electric conventional takeoff and landing craft slated for 2027, which operates like a fixed-wing plane.

A history of lawsuits and failures

The road to flying cars has been riddled with setbacks — and some bankruptcies.

One of the most recent certification hurdles came in 2024. Germany-based Volocopter scrapped plans to bring air taxis to the Paris Olympics after failing to obtain certification for its engines.

Other air taxi makers have faced worse fates.

German electric jet maker Lilium shut down operations last year after a last-minute emergency package collapsed. At its height, the company raised over a billion, going public through a SPAC merger during the 2021 frenzy.

Andrew Beebe, a partner at Obvious Ventures and investor in Lilium, said the capital-intensive nature of the business makes it difficult for eVTOL companies to succeed without the right expertise.

Vertical was once on the brink of collapse. Now, the company is in the middle of a massive turnaround.

In 2021, as Vertical’s cash reserves dwindled, hedge fund manager Jason Mudrick swooped in with a funding package. By 2024, his firm, Mudrick Capital, became the majority stakeholder in the air taxi maker through a debt restructuring deal and later forced out its founder.

Since then, Vertical revamped, stepped-up marketing, and changed its management team. This April, the company secured a funding package worth up to $850 million.

Lawsuits — like the ones unfolding between Vertical, Archer and Joby — also aren’t new for the industry.

In 2023, Archer settled intellectual property disputes with Boeing and its air taxi unit Wisk, and signed an agreement to collaborate on autonomous tech, and invested in the air taxi maker.

Above all, eVTOL makers and experts alike have one major message for investors riding out the lawsuits and certification: prepare for a bumpy ride.

“This is certainly a long-term play,” said Archer’s Goldstein. “I let the investors pick the stock prices when they think it’s good or bad, and we’ll make sure we bring a safe airplane to market.”