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Archer Avi­a­tion will work with REEF, the largest oper­a­tor of mobil­i­ty and logis­tics hubs in the USA, to devel­op plans for urban take­off and land­ing sites for its eVTOL air­craft in some of the coun­try’s most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed cities.

REEF’s net­work of over 4,800 park­ing garages is a mul­ti-mil­lion park­ing space sys­tem that cov­ers 70 per cent of North America’s urban pop­u­la­tion, yet is large­ly under-utilised giv­en the chang­ing nature of urban liv­ing in recent years. Archer and REEF will work togeth­er to allow Archer’s eVTOL air­craft to access large­ly dor­mant rooftop sites in cities such as Archer’s two key launch mar­kets of Los Ange­les and Mia­mi.

REEF’s net­work lends itself per­fect­ly to Archer’s plans for devel­op­ing ver­ti­ports in dense urban areas. With prox­im­i­ty to high-traf­fic city hubs, Archer is look­ing to estab­lish oper­a­tions in loca­tions that will ben­e­fit most from access to the company’s planned urban air mobil­i­ty net­work.

Using Prime Radi­ant, the company’s pro­pri­etary data sci­ence tech­nol­o­gy, Archer will deter­mine opti­mal land­ing sites with­in REEF’s exist­ing net­work. The goal is to iden­ti­fy sites that already have the space need­ed for take­off, land­ing and charg­ing, so min­i­mal con­struc­tion is required for oper­a­tions to launch.

Adam Gold­stein, co-Founder and co-CEO of Archer, said: “Archer is focused on devel­op­ing urban aer­i­al rideshar­ing net­works that will ease the issues caused by exces­sive city con­ges­tion. We believe that work­ing with REEF will allow us to accel­er­ate our mis­sion to tran­si­tion con­gest­ed urban areas to more sus­tain­able forms of trans­porta­tion.

“The abil­i­ty to build out our ear­ly ver­ti­ports with light retro­fitting of exist­ing struc­tures would allow us to scale oper­a­tions while main­tain­ing our focus on afford­abil­i­ty for our cus­tomers. We’re thrilled to announce this strate­gic rela­tion­ship as we con­tin­ue to exe­cute on our roadmap towards bring­ing urban air mobil­i­ty to real­i­ty.”

Archer is the sec­ond eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er to part­ner with REEF, after Joby Avi­a­tion announced a sim­i­lar agree­ment in June. Joby has said it will focus ini­tial­ly on Los Ange­les, Mia­mi, New York and San Fran­cis­co.

Brett Adcock, co-Founder and co-CEO of Archer, said: “REEF as a com­pa­ny is sym­bol­ic of a reef in nature, bring­ing new life and fos­ter­ing growth. That’s exact­ly what we’re work­ing on doing with REEF – tak­ing func­tion­al struc­tures and reju­ve­nat­ing them to open up new pos­si­bil­i­ties for the pop­u­la­tions around them. Togeth­er we have an oppor­tu­ni­ty not just to solve logis­ti­cal issues but to add tan­gi­ble val­ue to the com­mu­ni­ties in which we’ll oper­ate.”

George Fal­li­ca, REEF’s Chief Rev­enue Offi­cer, added: “One of REEF’s core areas of focus is to reduce traf­fic con­ges­tion and car­bon emis­sions by sup­port­ing incred­i­ble trans­porta­tion tech­nolo­gies like those Archer is build­ing.

“Archer’s focus on sus­tain­abil­i­ty and trans­form­ing the every­day urban trav­el expe­ri­ence aligns close­ly with our own mis­sion. We’re excit­ed to be work­ing with them on plans to reshape city land­scapes and make exist­ing infra­struc­ture even more func­tion­al.”