RobotRisk Autonomous Systems Incident & Risk Register
RobotRisk / drones evtol / Vertical Aerospace

Vertical Aerospace

Products: evtol, air-taxi. Risk band: Elevated   RobotRisk index 19.5/100 (incidents/exposure, time-weighted) · 96th percentile of 171 drones evtol companies.

Analyst brief

The record consists of one entry: the VX4 prototype eVTOL aircraft crashed during an uncrewed flight test in August 2023, coded at severity 4, the highest severity level in this dataset. The uncrewed designation limits the event to a hardware-loss classification rather than a casualty incident. Vertical Aerospace's index (19.7) and percentile (96.5, elevated band) place it well above most category peers, consistent with a single high-severity test-flight failure. The record is a single press-reported flight-test event, not a pattern of recurring failures.

Entries by year and severity

012023 S4: 1123
S1S2S3S4S5

By incident type

By severity

RobotRisk index vs drones evtol alternatives

Comparisons over time

RobotRisk index over time

Yearly entries vs category average

crash over time vs category

Incident log (1 unique incidents)

SevDateTypeLocationIncidentSource
S408/09
2023
crash Kemble Airfield, Gloucestershire, …Vertical Aerospace VX4 prototype crashes during uncrewed flight test AeroTime / FlightGlobal

Alternatives in drones evtol

Terra DroneDJISkydweller AeroXPeng AeroHTMannaH3 DynamicsAutel RoboticsJoby
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