Archer Aviation CEO Adam Goldstein joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the timeline for eVTOL infrastructure and the commercial availability for these aircrafts.
"The category of electrical vertical take-off and landing aircraft to be used as air taxis has the potential to be absolutely huge," Goldstein says. "The reason is that these vehicles can be used across so many applications. These vehicles can travel up to 100 miles, they can carry a pilot plus four passengers or an equivalent of a thousand pounds of payload, and that just enables a lot of different use cases.
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- Well, Archer Aviation is flying high this morning. With shares of more than 3% there after announcing their latest partnership with NASA. One that will focus on studying battery cells and use cases for spaceflight. This comes on the heels of another partnership Archer announced with Atlantic Aviation to build out more infrastructure to support eVTOL operations.
Let's bring in Adam Goldstein, Archer Aviation CEO, to discuss more. And Adam, we should mention, by the way, for those who are not familiar, eVTOLs, Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing Aircrafts. Talk to me about this partnership with NASA. What does it ultimately mean in your efforts to expand adoption of eVTOLs?
ADAM GOLDSTEIN: Well, this is a really exciting partnership because NASA was actually where eVTOL technology was created. NASA was one of the first groups to figure out how to fly an airplane using multiple electric motors. So that's why this is really such a special partnership.
But specifically, we're going to be working with NASA on applications that will help really show and validate the extreme safety that these vehicles have. We're starting with battery cells, where we will work together to validate the safety of the cells and really show the world the performance that these can have.
But it's also really exciting because there's lessons that can be learned here and may even get potentially used in space.
- So Adam, with that in mind then, what does the investor appetite look like for this technology? And especially as it's positioned against other climate tech.
ADAM GOLDSTEIN: So the category of electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft to be used as air taxis has the potential to be absolutely huge. It's hard to say exactly how big. But I think everybody agrees that it's going to be quite large. And the reason is that these vehicles can be used across so many different applications.
These vehicles can travel up to 100 miles. They can carry a pilot plus four passengers, or an equivalent 1,000 pounds of payload. And that just enables a lot of different use cases. And so the primary use case that we're focused on is moving people around. And that market has been estimated to be as big as trillions. And so there are an amazing amount of things that we can do, starting with moving passengers, but also expanding into cargo as well.
- What does the infrastructure look like for that vision? I mean, how much of that has actually been built out?
ADAM GOLDSTEIN: So the good news is that we've built vehicles that will leverage the existing infrastructure that's out there. And so if you think about applications like a route that's an airport to a city center, there's already infrastructure that's there. So a trip that we've been working on with one of our partners, United Airlines, is a trip going from Manhattan to Newark Liberty International.
So we've focused on heliports that exist already in Manhattan and then flying into the airport, Newark, which has existing infrastructure already built. So this same type of process can be applied across the thousands of general aviation airports that exist today, the thousands of heliports that exist today, which can enable our go-to market in a much more efficient and a much larger scalable way than I think many people actually understand.
- Adam, what's the timeline for this to come to market? And when is it going to be commercially available?
ADAM GOLDSTEIN: The good news on the timeline is that the FAA has really put into place all the things that are necessary to get to market by the end of 2024, which will enable us to come to market in 2025. So we're in the final stages of the certification process. Going through that with the regulator, the FAA, here in the US. With the goal of launching in the US in 2025, and then ultimately, internationally, in 2026 and beyond.
- And Adam, I want to ask about your c-suite here. Obviously, a lot of concerns when you think about flying, especially the news about Boeing. How are you prioritizing safety and how is that reflected in your c-suite?
ADAM GOLDSTEIN: Yeah, that's a great question. So one of the key people that's helped really set the frameworks in place for how this industry will start was Billy Nolan, who was the former administrator at the FAA. So we recently hired Billy Nolan to be Archer's chief safety officer.
Billy has decades of experience as a helicopter pilot, as a captain at several different airlines, and has spent a lot of time in critical safety positions. So he is very well qualified to understand how to implement a proper safety policy that can enable Archer, and really the industry, to be able to scale into becoming a mass market transportation solution.
- Well, certainly excited to see where things go from here. Appreciate you taking the time to join us this morning. Adam Goldstein, Archer Aviation CEO. Thank you so much.