Archer, BETA and Macquarie Form ACES Consortium for Electric Aviation Charging Network

Archer Avi­a­tion, BETA Tech­nolo­gies, and Mac­quar­ie Cap­i­tal have launched America’s Con­sor­tium for Elec­tric Sky­ways (ACES), with plans to deploy inter­op­er­a­ble charg­ing infra­struc­ture at up to 250 air taxi sites across major U.S. met­ro­pol­i­tan areas by 2030.

The con­sor­tium, announced July 16, 2026, aims to build stan­dard­ized charg­ing facil­i­ties using BETA’s elec­tric avi­a­tion charg­ers based on the Com­bined Charg­ing Stan­dard (CCS). This open stan­dard has been endorsed by the Gen­er­al Avi­a­tion Man­u­fac­tur­ers Asso­ci­a­tion and wide­ly adopt­ed across the eVTOL indus­try.

Archer will anchor the net­work with its planned pas­sen­ger air taxi oper­a­tions in key mar­kets. BETA will sup­ply the charg­ing hard­ware, while Mac­quar­ie Cap­i­tal will pro­vide strate­gic advice and help arrange invest­ment cap­i­tal for site acqui­si­tion and devel­op­ment.

The ini­tia­tive pri­or­i­tizes loca­tions where Archer and BETA intend to oper­ate, includ­ing mar­kets par­tic­i­pat­ing in the FAA’s eVTOL Inte­gra­tion Pilot Pro­gram (eIPP). It aligns with broad­er U.S. gov­ern­ment efforts to sup­port advanced air mobil­i­ty com­mer­cial­iza­tion.

The shared infra­struc­ture mod­el is designed to ben­e­fit mul­ti­ple oper­a­tors. Archer plans to use the charg­ers for pas­sen­ger ser­vices dur­ing peak hours, while BETA’s cus­tomers can uti­lize them for car­go and med­ical trans­port. The net­work could also extend to air­port ground sup­port vehi­cles at major air­ports, cre­at­ing shared avi­a­tion infra­struc­ture.

This col­lab­o­ra­tive approach seeks to avoid frag­men­ta­tion into com­pet­ing pro­pri­etary sys­tems. By build­ing a uni­fied net­work, the con­sor­tium aims to reduce costs and accel­er­ate deploy­ment across the indus­try.

Accord­ing to Kyle Clark, founder and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of BETA Tech­nolo­gies: “The infra­struc­ture required to open our nation’s air­ports and future ver­ti­ports to advanced air mobil­i­ty is a frac­tion of what peo­ple expect. By deploy­ing inter­op­er­a­ble charg­ers built on an open stan­dard, we’re putting in place near­ly all the phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture this indus­try needs, built so every oper­a­tor can use it.”

David Farkas, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, Aero­space, Defense & Gov­ern­ment Ser­vices, Mac­quar­ie Cap­i­tal, com­ment­ed that “Mac­quar­ie Cap­i­tal has spent three decades build­ing essen­tial infra­struc­ture that pow­ers economies around the world. This con­sor­tium brings togeth­er the right com­bi­na­tion of tech­nol­o­gy, oper­a­tions, and advice on arrang­ing cap­i­tal to do the same for elec­tric avi­a­tion.”

“We are help­ing to build the foun­da­tion of a nation­al net­work that every eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­er can rely on, and a tem­plate for how part­ner­ships can accel­er­ate the next gen­er­a­tion of urban mobil­i­ty in Amer­i­ca and beyond.”

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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