Archer hires Uber Elevate co-founder Nikhil Goel as Chief Commercial Officer to lead company’s global commercial efforts

Uber Ele­vate co-founder Nikhil Goel has joined Archer as Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer, where he will lead the com­pa­ny’s glob­al com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion efforts as it pre­pares to bring Mid­night to mar­ket in 2025 in the US, in part­ner­ship with Unit­ed Air­lines.

The news is hot on heels of Archer bring­ing in For­mer FAA Admin­is­tra­tor, Bil­ly Nolen, as it Chief Safe­ty Offi­cer. Goel brings deep indus­try exper­tise to Archer after co-found­ing Uber Ele­vate, Uber’s air taxi divi­sion, and joint­ly author­ing the Uber Ele­vate white paper that is wide­ly cred­it­ed with estab­lish­ing the vision for the com­mer­cial eVTOL air­craft indus­try. 

As Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer, Goel will be respon­si­ble for spear­head­ing Archer’s strat­e­gy with a focus on bring­ing New York, Chica­go, Los Ange­les, Mia­mi and San Fran­cis­co online as Archer’s ini­tial domes­tic mar­kets. He will also be look­ing to cap­ture inter­na­tion­al demand by stew­ard­ing part­ner­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties across sev­er­al key mar­kets, includ­ing the Mid­dle East, Asia, and Latin Amer­i­ca.

Com­ment­ing on his new appoint­ment, Goel, who was recog­nised in the 2021 edi­tion of the eVTOL Insights Power­book, said: “My career has been focused on trans­form­ing the way peo­ple move in and around cities and enabling the future of on-demand, urban air trans­porta­tion.

“I’ve been work­ing with Adam and the team for sev­er­al years, and I believe Archer is the most well-posi­tioned eVTOL air­craft OEM to make this vision a real­i­ty with the industry’s lead­ing team and prod­uct. It’s an hon­our to join the com­pa­ny as Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer and lead our path to mar­ket.”

After start­ing at Uber as a prod­uct leader on the emerg­ing mar­kets and rid­er expe­ri­ence teams, Goel co-found­ed Uber Ele­vate. Work­ing along­side NASA and Uber exec­u­tives, Goel helped spear­head the vision for Uber Ele­vate which has, in turn, inspired the approach to com­mer­cial­iz­ing the indus­try.

In 2020, Goel helped spin off the Uber Ele­vate busi­ness in a strate­gic sale to Joby Avi­a­tion. Goel has been a Senior Advi­sor to Archer since 2020 and pri­or to Uber held roles at McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny, Google, Microsoft, and NASA. He attend­ed Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty and earned his Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Engi­neer­ing with a dou­ble major in com­put­er engi­neer­ing and eco­nom­ics.

Adam Gold­stein, Archer’s Founder and CEO, said: “Hav­ing recent­ly trav­eled around the world to the largest inter­na­tion­al mar­kets and seen first­hand how strong the demand for our air­craft is out­side the U.S., it’s clear that now is the right time to make this strate­gic hire and bring Nikhil on to cap­i­tal­ize on the siz­able mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ty for domes­tic and glob­al expan­sion.

“Since day one, we’ve laid out an aggres­sive goal to be the first to bring an eVTOL air­craft to the UAM mar­ket, and adding Nikhil to our senior lead­er­ship team sig­nif­i­cant­ly bol­sters our efforts to reach that goal.” 

Goel’s addi­tion is time­ly as Archer is con­tin­u­ing to rapid­ly advance its com­mer­cial­iza­tion efforts after receiv­ing a $10 mil­lion pre-deliv­ery pay­ment from Unit­ed Air­lines for 100 eVTOL air­craft that it antic­i­pates deploy­ing into the mul­ti­ple point-to-point routes it has announced along­side Unit­ed in the US.

Archer’s goal is to trans­form urban trav­el, replac­ing 60–90 minute com­mutes by car, with esti­mat­ed 10–20 minute elec­tric air taxi flights that are safe, sus­tain­able, low noise and cost com­pet­i­tive with ground trans­porta­tion. With a range of up to 100 miles, Archer’s Mid­night is a pilot­ed, four pas­sen­ger air­craft designed to per­form rapid back-to-back flights with min­i­mal charge time in between flights.

Com­po­nent man­u­fac­tur­ing is already under­way for Archer’s con­form­ing Mid­night air­craft, as the com­pa­ny is tar­get­ing final assem­bly of its con­form­ing Mid­night air­craft in the fourth quar­ter of 2023 and to begin pilot­ed flight test oper­a­tions in ear­ly 2024.