From VX4 to Valo: how Vertical Aerospace rewrote its eVTOL for the real world
December 10, 2025
Vertical Aerospace has officially retired the VX4 name and introduced Valo, a redesigned eVTOL that will be the company’s production aircraft for air-taxi services in the UK and abroad.
Valo is billed as a more advanced successor to the VX4 prototype, shaped by flight-test data and airline feedback rather than spreadsheet optimism.
From VX4 testbed eVTOL to production design Valo
The VX4 was always presented as a technology demonstrator. It is a piloted eVTOL designed to carry four passengers up to 100 miles at around 150 mph, using eight electric motors and distributed propulsion to meet airliner-level safety targets with zero operating emissions.
VX4 flight tests in UK airspace have already shown wingborne speeds above 115 mph and generated tens of thousands of data points on stability, control and energy use.
Valo takes those lessons and packages them into a certifiable product. Vertical describes it as a new, more advanced design informed by the VX4 test programme and direct input from airline and operator customers.
What’s changed in Vertical Aerospace’s new Valo eVTOL?
At first glance, Valo keeps the same basic mission as VX4, but the details are very different:
- Aerodynamic airframe: Valo features a cleaner fuselage and reworked wing and propeller layout, optimised using data from VX4 flight tests to cut drag and improve efficiency.
- Under-floor battery system: Instead of battery packs distributed around the airframe, Valo uses a liquid-cooled under-floor battery architecture. This frees up cabin space and is designed to accommodate future battery upgrades.
- Redesigned propulsion and redundancy: The production aircraft incorporates updated propeller architecture and full certifiable redundancy of critical systems to meet the most demanding global safety standards.
On paper, performance targets remain similar to VX4: Valo is designed to fly up to 100 miles at speeds of up to 150 mph with zero operating emissions, targeting airliner-level safety certification in 2028.
Valo’s larger, more flexible passenger cabin
Where Valo moves furthest from VX4 is inside the cabin. VX4 was conceived as a four-passenger air taxi with large windows and a relatively compact luggage allowance.
Valo launches with a premium four-seat layout, but the cabin and door geometry have been designed from the outset to support up to six passengers plus an observer seat in future variants.
Vertical also claims Valo offers the largest baggage capacity in its class, with room for six cabin bags and six checked bags, responding directly to airline feedback that airport transfer passengers will not trade down on luggage.
This flexibility matters commercially. Operators can start with a high-yield four-seat product, then increase capacity later to improve seat-mile economics without re-certifying a completely new aircraft.
Safety, certification and UK production plans for Vertical Aerospace’s eVTOL
Both VX4 and Valo target the same end state: certification to airliner-level safety standards with the UK CAA and EASA. The difference is maturity. Valo’s architecture, including its redundancy, battery installation and systems layout, is being frozen specifically for type certification, backed by VX4’s accumulated test hours.
Crucially, Valo is also the vehicle for Vertical’s industrial plan. The company intends to build seven certification aircraft in the UK and ramp to more than 225 production aircraft per year by 2030, a move it claims could create over 2,000 high-skilled jobs and add £3 billion a year to the UK economy by 2035.
Despite the rebrand, the core proposition is unchanged: a piloted, zero-emission aircraft carrying up to six passengers on short-haul missions of around 100 miles, primarily linking airports and city centres. Valo is simply the production-ready expression of that idea, built on the VX4’s back-to-basics testwork and re-shaped to meet what paying operators say they actually need.
