Archer and Dufour Aerospace added to SMG Consulting’s AAM Reality Index

SMG Con­sult­ing’s Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Index — the rat­ing tool which describes the like­li­hood of an eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er cer­ti­fy­ing its air­craft, enter­ing ser­vice and pro­duc­ing thou­sands of units each year — has been updat­ed with two new addi­tions.

Join­ing the ini­tial list of 14 are Dufour Aero­space, which is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing its aEro3 eVTOL for the med­ical sup­ply trans­porta­tion mar­ket, and Archer Avi­a­tion — the Cal­i­for­nia-based com­pa­ny which recent­ly went pub­lic as part of a SPAC merg­er deal with Atlas Crest Invest­ment Corp.

Speak­ing to eVTOL Insights, Ser­gio Cecut­ta, Part­ner at SMG Con­sult­ing, said: “When the index was first pub­lished, we com­mit­ted to add new entrants and incor­po­rate in the rat­ings the lat­est infor­ma­tion about the exist­ing entrants on a reg­u­lar sched­ule. The lat­est release of the index adds two com­pa­nies, Archer Avi­a­tion and Dufour Aero­space as well as updat­ing the rat­ings of sev­er­al of the OEMs.

“We added Archer Avi­a­tion as it is a com­pa­ny with a deep tal­ent bench, excel­lent fund­ing — espe­cial­ly once the SPAC goes through and adds around $1 bil­lion in cash to the company’s bal­ance sheet, unique part­ners, and a pos­si­bil­i­ty of being one of the top 5 AAM OEMs.

“We added Dufour Aero­space as it is a com­pa­ny that has attract­ed tal­ent from the diverse Swiss aero­space tal­ent pool, it brings a tech­ni­cal solu­tion that is dif­fer­ent than all the oth­er entrants, tar­gets a use case that most of the oth­er OEMs see as sec­ondary, EMS. We believe they could be the Pila­tus of the AAM indus­try: a small, nim­ble, tech­ni­cal­ly savvy com­pa­ny that serves spe­cif­ic use cas­es.”

The ARI is based on five ele­ments: the fund­ing received by the com­pa­ny, the team that leads the com­pa­ny, the tech­nol­o­gy readi­ness of their vehi­cle, the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion progress of their vehi­cle, and the pro­duc­tion readi­ness towards full scale pro­duc­tion.

The for­mu­la scores each entrant on a 0 to 10 scale, using one dec­i­mal point to dis­tin­guish entrants. A 0 rep­re­sents a com­pa­ny just con­sid­er­ing the mar­ket with lit­tle to no financ­ing, while a 10 rep­re­sents a com­pa­ny with a com­mer­cial prod­uct that is pro­duced in thou­sands of units per year.

SMG Con­sult­ing added that no com­pa­ny at present would be able to achieve a 10 at the moment. But com­pa­nies like Joby Avi­a­tion and Volo­copter could increase their cur­rent rat­ing, giv­en their con­tin­ued progress towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and launch of the first com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger flights.

Cecut­ta added: “Addi­tion­al com­pa­nies are going to join in the future, but we plan to cap the index at around 20 com­pa­nies over­all. As a tes­ti­mo­ny of how fast this indus­try moves, we have updat­ed as well the rat­ings of half of the ini­tial OEMs in the index.

“The updates orig­i­nat­ed from addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion in the areas of fund­ing, tech­ni­cal readi­ness, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion progress and pro­duc­tion readi­ness, based on new­ly pub­licly avail­able infor­ma­tion as well as expert knowl­edge shared by some of the OEMs.”

Archer’s eVTOL air­craft will trav­el dis­tances of 60 miles at speeds of 150mph. A full-scale ver­sion is expect­ed to be revealed lat­er this year, with air­craft pro­duc­tion to begin in 2023 and the first com­mer­cial flights start­ing in 2024.

While Dufour Aero­space’s aEro3 project con­sists of a large, manned tilt-wing air­craft with five to sev­en seats. The com­pa­ny’s CTO Jas­mine Kent and CEO Thomas Pfam­mat­ter spoke about the project last year as part of a Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety’s Writ­ers’ Group ses­sion.

Cecut­ta gave more detail to eVTOL Insights about the back­ground behind the AAM Real­i­ty Index in an in-depth inter­view last month.

For more infor­ma­tion about the AAM Real­i­ty Index, click here.

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