New eVTOL start-up Archer Aviation joins air taxi race

A new eVTOL air taxi start-up has emerged and means busi­ness, assem­bling a team with expe­ri­ence from the likes of Air­bus, Joby Avi­a­tion and Wisk.

Based in Palo Alto, Cal­i­for­nia, Archer Avi­a­tion is led by entre­pre­neurs Brett Adcock and Adam Gold­stein, and it plans to build what they say will be the ‘first-ever com­mer­cial­ly viable elec­tric VTOL air­craft’.

Despite the pair being new to the indus­try, they have brought in an impres­sive wealth of tal­ent to help Archer on its jour­ney. Chief Engi­neer Geoff Bow­er comes from Air­bus, as does Avion­ics Lead Damien Bar­don, Gio­van­ni Droan­di in Aero­dy­nam­ics and Flight Test Lead Matt Deal.

From Wisk is GNC Lead Alan Chen, VP of Engi­neer­ing Tom Muniz, Elec­tric Propul­sion Lead Diederik Mar­ius, Direc­tor of Engi­neer­ing John­ny Melack and Chief Avion­ics Archi­tect Scott Fur­man.

Acoustics Lead Ben Gold­man has got expe­ri­ence with Joby Avi­a­tion and Bell.

It is ear­ly days for the com­pa­ny so far, and their web­site men­tions its air­craft can trav­el 60 miles at speeds of 150mph. It will use 143 kWh of bat­tery cell ener­gy, which breaks down in 26 kWh when hov­er­ing, 80 kWh dur­ing cruise and 37 kWh in reserve.

Unveil­ing their mas­ter plan, Archer Avi­a­tion aims to:

• Build an air­craft to demon­strate the capa­bil­i­ties of elec­tric VTOL
• Cer­ti­fy an air­craft that is just as safe as com­mer­cial air­lin­ers
• Launch com­mer­cial routes in cities and launch inte­grate autonomous sys­tems for safe­ty

Adcock and Gold­stein added: “Today half of the world lives in cities and the Unit­ed Nations projects that by 2050, close to 70 per cent of the world will live in cities. The timescale around scal­ing ground infra­struc­ture, roads and bridges are too long and cost­ly and giv­en their 2D nature can’t sup­port a 3D city.

“If you can build an elec­tric air­craft that has high per­for­mance, low cost, high safe­ty and low noise — you have the abil­i­ty to unlock a new dimen­sion of trav­el — one that lives in the third dimen­sion and has almost infi­nite scal­ing poten­tial. We believe this is the start of a new gold­en age of avi­a­tion that we haven’t seen in 100 years.

“We are in the ear­ly days, but if suc­cess­ful, there’s an abil­i­ty to build one of the 10 most sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness­es in the world and more impor­tant­ly help dri­ve the world to a zero emis­sions future.”

For more infor­ma­tion about Archer Avi­a­tion, click here.