The FAA has never certified this aircraft category
eVTOL isn’t a tweaked helicopter or a lighter plane. It’s a new aircraft category, and honestly, nobody’s flown the rulebook before either.
The FAA finalized powered-lift certification (14 CFR Parts 21, 27, 29) in October 2023.
EASA’s running its own version, SC-VTOL. Every part on these aircraft needs its own paper trail of analysis and testing.
Grab a standard part that’s already qualified elsewhere, and you skip most of that. Which is awkward for AM, because custom geometry is the whole point, and now it’s also the most expensive thing to certify.
Teams are pushing through it anyway. LIFT Aircraft printed over 100 components, including the ENDY bracket, a safety-critical part, and shaved 40% off its weight.
Materialise’s EN9100 certification has opened the door for AM parts in low-criticality commercial aviation, too.
Where it gets interesting is propulsion. These are electric aircraft, so stators, rotors, heat exchangers, all of it is getting redesigned with AM lattices for cooling & weight that CNC just can’t touch.
Then there’s the battery. Sakuu is printing polymeric current collectors specifically to cut thermal runaway risk. That’s a problem legacy aircraft never had to think about.
Old aerospace bends AM to fit frameworks built decades ago. eVTOL is building both the aircraft and the rulebook at the same time.
Spark: when the regulator and the manufacturer are both figuring it out live, who should actually be setting the pace?
