An electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft is a variety of VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft that uses electric power to hover, take off, and land vertically. This technology came about owing to major advances in electric propulsion (motors, batteries, fuel cells, electronic controllers) and the emerging need for new aerial vehicles for Advanced Air Mobility and Urban Air Mobility that can enable greener and quieter flights. Electric and hybrid propulsion systems (EHPS) have also the potential of lowering the operating costs of aircraft.

Original eVTOL aircraft designs are being developed by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that include legacy manufacturers such as Airbus, Boeing, Embraer, Honda, Hyundai, and Toyota, as well as several start-up companies including Archer Aviation, EHang, Joby Aviation, Overair, and Volocopter. This ecosystem of firms developing eVTOLs includes also spin-off of legacy aircraft manufacturers, such as Eve Air Mobility that emerged from the EmbraerX division of Embraer, as well as partnerships, such as Wisk Aero that was launched as a joint venture between Boeing and Larry Page's Kitty Hawk.

The concept of eVTOL aircraft emerged in 2009 when a video of the NASA Puffin eVTOL concept went viral on November 11, 2009, showcasing a single person concept rendering of the technology, and concept in flight. Following this, the first Puffin paper at the VFS Specialists Conference on Aeromechanics, on January 9, 2010. This concept utilized a new technology developed at NASA called Distributed Electric Propulsion (DEP). Additional Puffin papers were published on September 13 at the 10th AIAA ATIO Conference, NASA Puffin Electric Tailsitter VTOL Concept and Puffin Redundant Electric Powertrain System. This was fast followed in 2011 by several industry efforts, namely the AugustaWestland Project Zero (Italy), the Volocopter VC1 (Germany) and the Opener BlackFly (US). It was officially introduced by the Vertical Flight Society and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) in 2014 during the "Transformative Vertical Flight Concepts Joint Workshop on Enabling New Flight Concepts through Novel Propulsion and Energy Architectures" held in Virginia.

Since then, there has been a significant increase in interest among aircraft manufacturers for eVTOLs, and companies such as Boeing, Airbus and Bell have also worked on the technology:

In addition to these major aircraft manufacturers, startups have been playing an important role in the development of these air vehicles and had sometimes been leaders in technological advances.

Uber published a paper on a project called Elevate co-authored by Jeff Holden, Nikhil Goel, and Mark Moore. The paper outlined the feasibility of an on-demand aviation transportation system. That document, along with subsequent annual Elevate summits the company hosted from 2017 to 2019, helped advance the concepts of eVTOL aircraft and Urban Air Mobility (UAM) from a science-fiction concept to a potential aerospace sector pursued by dozens of development projects.

In December, 2020, Uber's Elevate was acquired by Joby Aviation. Upon acquisition, Joby CEO JoeBen Bivert said, "The team at Uber Elevate has not only played an important role in our industry, they have also developed a remarkable set of software tools that build on more than a decade of experience enabling on-demand mobility."

In 2020, Tetra Aviation won the "disruptor award" at the GoFly personal flight contest for its single-seat eVTOL. In 2021, the company announced its Mk5 personal eVTOL that it expects to deliver in 2022. It incorporates 32 vertical lift rotors distributed across long, thin front and rear wings, along with a rear pusher prop for cruising. It uses a mostly aluminum frame, with carbon-fiber/aramid-reinforced polymer bodywork. The craft is 8.62 m (28.3 ft) wide, 6.15 m (20.2 ft) long and 2.51 m (8 ft 3 in) high. The battery pack holds 13.5-kWh. Empty weight is 488 kg (1,076 lb) and hosts an up to 79 kg (174 lb) pilot. The vehicle features at least three flight controllers, driving 32 vertical propellers in the case of motor or flight controller failure, with a parachute in the event of total failure. The plane is to be sold as an experimental kit aircraft that requires only a private pilot license.