It’s a Bird, it’s a Plane, No, it’s an Investment Opportunity
Vertical Aerospace brought its new electric air taxi, Valo, to New York City recently, kicking off a U.S. tour that looks, in the glossy renderings, like the start of an urban air-mobility rollout over the Manhattan skyline. In practice it’s a roadshow aimed at investors, partners and regulators, with the aircraft turning up in the flesh as a full-scale display piece rather than the first unit of a flying fleet. Still, it’s the kind of tangible prop that helps people suspend disbelief for long enough to imagine the Jetsons commute finally arriving, albeit on an aviation timeline that measures “soon” in years.
Technically, Vertical is keeping the public-facing spec sheet pretty lean. The company describes Valo as its “certification-ready” commercial eVTOL aircraft, designed for flights of up to 100 miles at speeds of up to 150 mph, with “zero operating emissions,” and engineered to meet “airliner-level safety standards.” The cabin pitch is premium-first: four seats initially, panoramic windows, generous personal space and “class-leading” luggage capacity. There’s also a plan to expand to six seats, which might help unit economics a little.
What’s notably missing, at least in this release, are the technical details: battery capacity and chemistry, expected energy consumption per mile, charging time and charging power requirements, noise levels under realistic approach profiles, redundancy architecture, rotor count etc, etc. Vertical is calling the aircraft “certification-ready,” but the deeper engineering specifics are either still under wraps or simply not part of the roadshow narrative.
Vertical says the route planning around Manhattan focuses on operational feasibility and infrastructure integration, with a spread of use cases that includes airport transfers between Downtown Skyport and major regional airports like JFK, event travel to MetLife Stadium potentially via established facilities such as Teterboro, sightseeing flights leaning into the cabin’s big windows and the quiet/zero-emissions pitch, weekend travel links to East Hampton, cross-town hops between Downtown Skyport and existing heliports like West 30th Street or East 40th Street, and even emergency services transfers within the region.
Vertical’s CEO Stuart Simpson says the U.S. tour builds on Valo’s unveiling in London in December 2025 and reflects progress across testing, partnerships and certification, calling New York a natural next step for exploring urban and regional routes with safety and real-world operations at the core.
Vertical is targeting certification in 2028, with entry into service after regulatory approval. Even with scant technical details it could be a step closer to the future we were promised.