SpotCharge

Electric Aviation Deep Dive: The Programs Actually Flying in 2026

8 min readby Travis Corey
industryaviation

TL;DR

Companion piece to Electric Airliners and the Megawatt Chargers That Power Them — that one is about the charging standard. This one is about the aircraft.

Nine active programs are tracked in the SpotCharge dataset (see /tools/industry/aviation for the live table). Three categories:

  • All-electric regional fixed-wing (Eviation Alice, Beta CX300) — sub-500 km cargo and passenger feeder routes
  • Hybrid-electric regional (Heart Aerospace ES-30) — 30-seat regional with 200 km electric / 400 km hybrid
  • eVTOL urban air mobility (Joby S4, Archer Midnight, Wisk Gen 6, Vertical VX4, Volocopter VoloCity) — 35-240 km city hops

Two programs are in flight test today (Heart X1 demonstrator, Wisk Gen 6, Vertical VX4). Three programs have FAA certification underway with 2026 commercial-launch targets (Beta CX300, Joby S4, Archer Midnight). Two programs are paused or restructuring (Eviation, Lilium, Volocopter all hit major financial trouble in 2024-2025). One European program (Vertical VX4) is recovering from a 2023 flight-test crash.

Active programs at a glance

Aircraft Manufacturer Type Seats Electric range Status Target entry
ES-30 Heart Aerospace (SE/USA) Hybrid-electric 30 200 km / 400 km hybrid Design 2030
Heart X1 (demo) Heart Aerospace All-electric 4 150 km Flight test 2025
Alice Eviation (USA/IL) All-electric 9 400 km Paused TBD
CX300 / ALIA Beta Technologies (USA) All-electric 5 460 km Certification 2026
S4 Joby Aviation (USA) eVTOL 4 240 km Certification 2026
Midnight Archer Aviation (USA) eVTOL 4 160 km Certification 2026
Generation 6 Wisk Aero (USA, Boeing-owned) eVTOL 4 144 km Flight test 2028
VX4 Vertical Aerospace (UK) eVTOL 5 160 km Flight test 2027
Pioneer (Lilium Jet) Lilium (DE) eVTOL 6 175 km Paused TBD
VoloCity Volocopter (DE) eVTOL 2 35 km Certification 2026

Snapshot 2026-05-09. Source: company press releases, FAA + EASA filings, eVTOL.news, Aviation Week, GreenAir News.

What's actually about to fly commercially

Beta Technologies CX300 — the dark horse

Beta's the most overlooked of the certifying-now programs because it's a fixed-wing electric, not an eVTOL. The CX300 (5 seats, 460 km range, 1.2 MW peak charge rate) is closest to commercial entry — UPS has 10 firm orders for cargo routes, and United Therapeutics flies Beta aircraft for organ delivery in the eastern US.

What makes Beta different: they're also building the charging infrastructure. BETA Charge is a network of MCS-compliant chargers at airports — Burlington VT (HQ), Cincinnati, Manchester NH, several New York and Florida sites in 2025-2026. They charge their own aircraft and (eventually) others'. It's a vertically-integrated bet that paid off — by certification time, they'll have the infrastructure to operate.

The CX300 is FAA-certifying as a conventional fixed-wing electric aircraft first. The same airframe family is also being adapted as the ALIA-250 eVTOL, which will follow in certification.

Joby S4 — the eVTOL leader

Joby is the most-certified eVTOL program in the US, with the longest flight-test history (>30,000 hours) and a clearer cert path than peers. 4 seats, 240 km range at 200 mph cruise — that's the sweet spot for trips like Manhattan-to-JFK that take 60 minutes by car and 7 minutes by S4.

Launch markets: NYC and LA in 2026, with Delta Air Lines as the launch partner (passengers book through Delta). Toyota is a strategic investor and has helped on manufacturing scale-up. The DoD's Agility Prime program has funded military variant testing since 2020.

What's still uncertain: Type Certification timing. Joby has had FAA Special Conditions issued and is in advanced flight test, but commercial type cert hasn't landed as of mid-2026. The 2026 commercial launch depends on cert closing; if it slips, the launch slips.

Archer Midnight — the production-scaled bet

Archer's Midnight (4 seats, 160 km range) targets a different niche than Joby — short, high-frequency hops with 10-minute aircraft swaps. The economics work for very-high-utilization vertiports rather than longer regional links.

The differentiator: Stellantis is the manufacturing partner. A factory in Covington, Georgia is building Midnight airframes at automotive-style scale (target 650/year). United Airlines placed a $1B order; the LA 2028 Olympics are the public flagship target.

If Archer hits scale-manufacturing economics, it's the program most likely to undercut peers on per-flight cost — aviation OEMs traditionally produce tens or hundreds of airframes per year, not thousands.

Volocopter VoloCity — Europe's smallest hop

35 km range. 2 seats. Designed for very short city-center hops — think 5-10 minute flights, not regional travel. Demoed during the Paris 2024 Olympics. Filed for insolvency Dec 2024 and restructured Q2 2025; commercial EASA certification is the next milestone.

It's the smallest eVTOL of the certifying-now group, and the one with the most existential uncertainty. If it makes it through certification, it has a clear use case (high-density city centers); if it doesn't, the segment loses its only true short-hop entrant.

What's in flight test, not certifying yet

Wisk Aero Generation 6 — the Boeing-owned autonomous play

Wisk is doing something none of the others are: building an autonomous (no pilot) eVTOL from day one. Generation 6 is in flight test; the FAA self-flying certification path is the long pole in the schedule.

Boeing acquired full ownership of Wisk in 2023. The strategic logic: when (not if) eVTOL operations move to autonomous, Boeing wants to own the platform. Target commercial entry is 2028 — three years later than Joby/Archer/Beta — but if they hit it, the operating economics are dramatically better (no pilot weight or training cost).

Vertical Aerospace VX4 — recovering from a setback

UK-based, EASA-first certification. American Airlines holds 250 conditional orders. The August 2023 prototype crash during flight test set the program back ~12 months; recovery flight test resumed late 2024 and is progressing.

VX4 is the only meaningful European eVTOL still in active flight test after Lilium's restructuring. EASA's eVTOL cert framework is more mature than the FAA's, so VX4 may actually beat US programs to commercial European service.

What's paused or restructured

Eviation Alice — fundamentally uncertain

Eviation laid off most of its staff in February 2025 after a cofounder dispute with the majority owner. The Alice (9-seat all-electric, 400 km range) had completed a first test flight in September 2022 and has firm orders from Cape Air (75 units) and DHL Express (12 cargo). Restart is possible but no clear timeline as of 2026.

Lilium Pioneer — under new investors

Filed for insolvency in October 2024. Restructured under new investors in Q1 2025. The Pioneer (6 seats, 175 km, ducted-fan design) was technically interesting — different from the quadcopter-style designs of Joby/Archer/Wisk — but commercial development is paused while the company stabilizes.

Megawatt charging — the bottleneck

Every aircraft on the list above needs 600-1,500 kW of peak charging power to make their operating-day economics work. That's the Megawatt Charging System (MCS) — same standard developed for Class 8 electric trucks, now being repurposed for aviation.

Spec Value
Standard name MCS (Megawatt Charging System)
Current peak 1,250 kW (1.25 MW)
Long-term planned 4,000 kW (4 MW)
Voltage range 500 V to 1,250 V DC
Current range Up to 3,000 A continuous
Governing body CharIN consortium; SAE J3271 in development

The MCS plug is physically larger than CCS or NACS to handle 3,000 A continuous. Beta Technologies, Joby, Archer, and Heart Aerospace are all designing for MCS compatibility. Lilium + ABB demonstrated a working MegaWatt eVTOL charging station in 2023 with 30-minute full-charge / 15-minute 0-80% targets.

For more on the charging standard, the regulatory path, and why MCS unlocks both trucks and aircraft, see the companion post: Electric Airliners and the Megawatt Chargers That Power Them.

What to watch in the next 12 months

  1. Joby S4 type cert. If the FAA issues commercial type certification in H2 2026, Delta's NYC + LA launch happens on schedule. If it slips, every other 2026-target program watches nervously.
  2. Beta CX300 first commercial cargo route. UPS-Burlington VT route is the announced launch pair. First commercial flight likely Q4 2026.
  3. Archer + Stellantis Georgia factory volume. First production-rate batch in 2026 will indicate whether automotive-style scale economics work for eVTOLs.
  4. Eviation restart status. Late 2026 should clarify whether Alice has a future or whether the program is permanently paused.

The dataset above refreshes quarterly because the category moves that fast. Live data at /tools/industry/aviation.

Sources