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Archer and BETA Technologies to accelerate adoption of interoperable charging system across electric aviation market

Archer and BETA Tech­nolo­gies have announced an indus­try-first agree­ment to accel­er­ate the roll out of an inter­op­er­a­ble fast-charg­ing sys­tem across the elec­tric air­craft indus­try.

Archer will utilise two of BETA’s Charge Cube sys­tems at Archer’s flight test facil­i­ties, as well as a num­ber of BETA’s Mini Cube mobile charg­ing sys­tems, which Archer plans to rapid­ly deploy as need­ed.

Gain­ing access to BETA’s lead­ing elec­tric avi­a­tion charg­ing sys­tem and net­work through this col­lab­o­ra­tion is anoth­er crit­i­cal com­po­nent of Archer’s plan to cre­ate the most effi­cient, and scal­able, path to mar­ket for Archer’s eVTOL air­craft.

Adam Gold­stein, Archer’s founder and CEO, said: “Fast charg­ing is crit­i­cal to ensure rapid turn­around times between flights. A wide­spread, fast charg­ing sys­tem is crit­i­cal to ensur­ing elec­tric air taxis reach scale in the com­ing years and this col­lab­o­ra­tion between two indus­try lead­ers is an excit­ing step towards achiev­ing that.”

BETA’s charg­ing sys­tem uti­lizes the Com­bined Charg­ing Stan­dard (CCS) – a mul­ti­modal, inter­op­er­a­ble stan­dard employed by the top OEM’s.This GAMA endorsed stan­dard comes with peer reviewed and glob­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards and is har­mo­nized with EUROCAE ED-308.

BETA’s charg­ing sys­tems are already in use at 14 loca­tions across the east­ern U.S. and devel­op­ment work is under­way to install them at anoth­er 55 loca­tions along the East and Gulf Coasts, as well as at Archer’s facil­i­ties in Cal­i­for­nia.

Kyle Clark, BETA’s Founder and CEO, said: “Over the past decade, trans­porta­tion has shift­ed toward elec­tric and now we’re see­ing res­o­nance and via­bil­i­ty for avi­a­tion to do the same. A back­bone of reli­able, fast and acces­si­ble infra­struc­ture will be crit­i­cal to enabling this tech­nol­o­gy, which is why we’ve been focused on build­ing out a charg­ing net­work along­side our air­craft for some time now.

“When we designed our charg­ers, we saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty to sup­port the entire sec­tor by using an already peer reviewed stan­dard, and we’re thrilled to col­lab­o­rate with Archer now to val­i­date that aim.”

Archer’s charg­ers bring BETA’s net­work to the west coast. This mile­stone col­lab­o­ra­tion for the indus­try fol­lows the expan­sion of BETA’s net­work down the east coast – includ­ing the first elec­tric air­craft charg­er on a DoD instal­la­tion locat­ed at Duke Field, Eglin Air Force Base.

Dr. Michael Schwekutsch, SVP Pow­er­train at Archer, said: “Dur­ing my time as the VP of Pow­er­train Engi­neer­ing at Tes­la it was well under­stood that hav­ing a wide­ly acces­si­ble, fast-charg­er net­work was key to dri­ving the adop­tion of EVs and the same is true for eVTOLs and that’s why we are so excit­ed to col­lab­o­rate with BETA to to build out the charg­ing net­work for our elec­tric air taxis.”

The goal of BETA and Archer’s indus­try-first col­lab­o­ra­tion is to spur the wide­spread roll-out of an inter­op­er­a­ble elec­tric charg­ing net­work that fol­lows the stan­dards out­lined by the Gen­er­al Avi­a­tion Man­u­fac­tur­ers Asso­ci­a­tion (GAMA) and sup­ports the broad elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of vehi­cles.

In Sep­tem­ber, GAMA pub­lished a report titled “Inter­op­er­abil­i­ty of Elec­tric Charg­ing Infra­struc­ture” that high­lights the fact that shared charg­ing infra­struc­ture offers numer­ous ben­e­fits over mul­ti­ple pro­pri­etary pro­to­cols devel­oped by OEMs.

Pete Bunce, Pres­i­dent and CEO of GAMA, said: “The adop­tion of a uni­fied charg­ing stan­dard will help pro­mote elec­tric aviation’s devel­op­ment at scale. Enabling elec­tric air­craft and elec­tric ground vehi­cles from dif­fer­ent man­u­fac­tur­ers to share charg­ing infra­struc­ture will help reduce the costs of elec­tri­fy­ing exist­ing infra­struc­ture.

“A com­mon stan­dard will boost con­fi­dence in the emerg­ing Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty sec­tor of our indus­try and encour­age adop­tion of, and access to, pub­licly acces­si­ble charg­ing net­works.”

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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