Archer expands design and engineering team with two new hires, as efforts continue on certifying its eVTOL aircraft

Archer has announced the appoint­ments of Alan Tepe to lead propul­sion invert­er design and Jere­my May­er to head up motor design sys­tem devel­op­ment.

In his role, Tepe will over­see the design and advance­ment of the propul­sion invert­er tech­nol­o­gy that will help pow­er Archer’s eVTOL air­craft. While May­er will focus on the mechan­i­cal design and devel­op­ment of the air­craft motor.

Col­lec­tive­ly, the two have more than three decades of expe­ri­ence in their respec­tive fields and will help pow­er the com­pa­ny toward its mis­sion of rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing urban air mobil­i­ty.

Brett Adcock, Archer co-founder and co-CEO, said: “Alan and Jere­my pos­sess a unique com­bi­na­tion of the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence in their fields that will add to what we believe to be our indus­try-lead­ing motor devel­op­ment team.

“We can’t wait to share the phe­nom­e­nal work this team is doing as we progress towards our first flight mile­stone lat­er this year and con­tin­ue on our path­way toward our goal of launch­ing com­mer­cial eVTOL flight.”

As Archer pro­gress­es towards Maker’s mile­stone first flight, Tepe’s exten­sive back­ground work­ing with pow­er elec­tron­ics and dri­ve invert­ers will pro­vide crit­i­cal sup­port and guid­ance for the company’s engi­neer­ing team.

He comes to Archer after eight years at Tes­la, where he held mul­ti­ple high-lev­el posi­tions on Tesla’s mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing team. Pri­or to Tes­la, Tepe advised on mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing and design issues for Triple Ring Tech­nolo­gies and held key engi­neer­ing roles with Northrop Grum­man Aero­space Sys­tems, Boston Sci­en­tif­ic and NASA.

“I’m thrilled to be join­ing a group of excep­tion­al engi­neers and tech­nol­o­gists who are pas­sion­ate about rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing trans­porta­tion with eVTOL air­craft,” Tepe said.

“Our team’s work on the aircraft’s light­weight propul­sion invert­er tech­nol­o­gy will be crit­i­cal in opti­mis­ing our all-elec­tric flight design and ush­er­ing in the next era of urban trav­el. I’m excit­ed to get start­ed and con­tin­ue to build on all of Archer’s accom­plish­ments to date.”

May­er has near­ly 20 years of expe­ri­ence in mechan­i­cal and elec­tro­mag­net­ic engi­neer­ing devel­op­ing, design­ing and invent­ing motors for elec­tric vehi­cles, most recent­ly work­ing at Lucid Motors for sev­en years.

Pri­or to his time at Lucid Motors, May­er worked at Turn­tide Tech­nolo­gies, where he con­tributed to the devel­op­ment and mechan­i­cal design of numer­ous Turn­tide prod­ucts. May­er also pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a motor and gear­box engi­neer at Tes­la.

May­er said: “At a time when the avi­a­tion indus­try is ripe for inno­va­tion, I’m excit­ed to be join­ing a team at the fore­front of the eVTOL space to help design and evolve the ele­ments that pow­er the air­craft.

“Elec­tri­cal propul­sion motors dimin­ish main­te­nance costs and increase effi­cien­cy com­pared to con­ven­tion­al com­bus­tion engines and I am real­ly look­ing for­ward to using my expe­ri­ence to con­tribute to Archer’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary avi­a­tion plat­form.”

Adam Gold­stein, Archer’s co-founder and co-CEO, added: “We’ve made sig­nif­i­cant progress in the devel­op­ment of our air­craft in the past year, but we also know that there is much work still to be done. Alan and Jere­my are stel­lar addi­tions to our team and will help us con­tin­ue to build momen­tum as we look ahead to flight test­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“Every day, we move clos­er to the future of sus­tain­able urban air mobil­i­ty and we are excit­ed to have lead­ers like Alan and Jere­my join the team that’s mak­ing it a real­i­ty.”