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KakaoMobility to Fund Archer’s Korean Commercialisation, with plans to purchase up to 50 Midnight Aircraft Worth $250 Million

Archer Avi­a­tion announced today that Kakao­Mo­bil­i­ty (KM), Korea’s lead­ing mobil­i­ty as a ser­vice (MaaS) plat­form com­pa­ny, has signed a sig­nif­i­cant col­lec­tive agree­ment, reports a press release.

This cov­ers:-

: Joint par­tic­i­pa­tion in the K‑UAM Grand Chal­lenge.

: Planned pur­chase of up to 50 Mid­night Air­craft worth USD250 mil­lion includ­ing pre-deliv­ery pay­ments.

: Fund­ing of Archer’s Kore­an com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion.

: Own­ing and oper­at­ing the Mid­night Air­craft in Korea, start­ing in 2026, by offer­ing flights to more than 30 mil­lion reg­is­tered users on its Kakao T Mobile App.

: Begin­ning in the City of Seoul where the aver­age com­muter spends near­ly 90 min­utes a day stuck in traf­fic.

KM, along with its con­sor­tium part­ners LG UPlus and GS E&C, have cho­sen Archer as their eVTOL part­ner, to ensure they reach their goal of con­duct­ing pub­lic demon­stra­tion flights in the coun­try by late this year. KM will pay Archer USD7 mil­lion in 2024 as a first instal­ment to assist fund­ing ear­ly com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion efforts in Korea, with a sec­ond tranche due in Q1, 2025. 

The City of Seoul at Night

Christo­pher Sung­Wook Chang, Senior VP of Kakao­Mo­bil­i­ty, com­ment­ed, “Our part­ner­ship with Archer is a leap for­ward for urban mobil­i­ty. We can’t wait to debut Archer’s Mid­night Air­craft at the K‑UAM Grand Chal­lenge in 2024 as a com­mit­ment to trans­form­ing the dai­ly com­mute for mil­lions of Kakao T users.”

He con­tin­ued, “The vision is clear. Reduce the hours lost in traf­fic and ele­vate every­day trav­el with an elec­tric air taxi ser­vice that fea­tures Archer’s Mid­night air­craft.”

Nikhil Goel, Archer’s CCO, added, “Archer is expand­ing its inter­na­tion­al launch strat­e­gy to South Korea through this land­mark part­ner­ship. Togeth­er, we are com­mit­ted to rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing trans­porta­tion with Mid­night, ush­er­ing in a future of clean­er, faster and more effi­cient trav­el between and with­in Kore­an cities.”

The release explains, “The consortium’s com­ple­men­tary strengths gives it the abil­i­ty to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly to build a com­pre­hen­sive approach to inte­grate all-elec­tric air taxis into South Kore­a’s urban trans­porta­tion land­scape. Start­ing with the K‑UAM Grand Chal­lenge, the com­pa­nies intend to demon­strate how eVTOL air­craft can trans­form dai­ly com­mutes in Korea.”

It goes on, “The col­lab­o­ra­tion will also focus on build­ing best-in-class infra­struc­ture, includ­ing ver­ti­ports and air traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tems, to ensure safe and effi­cient oper­a­tions. The con­sor­tium is focused on bring­ing elec­tric air taxis to Korea because they can play a piv­otal role in achiev­ing a more sus­tain­able future, con­tribut­ing to South Korea’s broad­er goals of reduc­ing car­bon emis­sions and pro­mot­ing green tech­nol­o­gy.”

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For more infor­ma­tion

www.archer.com

(Top image: Archer Avi­a­tion)

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