Eureka: Archer Aviation’s CEO on bringing flying taxis to the UAE by the end 2025

0:15You're listening to Eureka on Monocle Radio, brought to you by the team behind the entrepreneurs, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. I'm Tom Edwards. Now, it's long been suggested that flying taxis will transform our cities, moving us around their streets quietly, cleanly, efficiently. Yet so far, the hype has certainly outpaced the hardware. But could we finally be about to take to the skies? The people behind Archer Aviation, a Silicon Valley startup building electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, certainly think so. Archer's four-seat Midnight is slated for liftoff in the UAE before the year's end, backed by the Abu Dhabi Investment Office and in partnership with Etihad Airways.

0:59The idea is to skip the traffic and connect Dubai to Abu Dhabi in just 20 minutes, a trip that can take two hours by car. But futuristic renderings are easier than clearing regulatory hurdles or, for that matter, flying in the extreme heat of the desert. Still, Archer Aviation founder and CEO Adam Goldstein insists the time is now. So is urban air mobility finally ready for takeoff? Here's Adam with more.

1:31There are three things that have enabled the launch of air taxis. First is the core underlying technologies of batteries have gotten good enough to the point where you can now make a vehicle that can carry enough stuff far enough, fast enough to make it economically viable. Thanks to the EV business and specifically Tesla for rapidly advancing the battery technology that enabled you to build an aircraft that can be viable and very safe, meaning people are excited to pay for this and you can travel far enough to make that interesting. So the core technology is there. A second thing that happened is, you know, you have a regulatory environment now that's very supportive, where there were rules that were established.

2:14The first set of rules were established by the FAA, which the rest of the world is starting to adopt, that you can actually now build and be able to certify these aircraft. And then finally, the capital investments that were needed to help launch the oil industry have been provided from the OEM providers, like Archer, to the infrastructure players that have come and built the core underlying infrastructure to enable all this. All that's in place now. We are working through the certification process with the goal to get it live by the end of this year. We built our cities and we live and we work in three dimensions, but the transportation rate has been stuck in two dimensions.

2:51So, you know, buildings are vertical, right? So that's how you can fit more people into cities and they work and live. And so you can always add more ground transportation, but that maxes out and that's why you see traffic in lots of different cities. I'm from the U.S., and Los Angeles is like sort of the global poster child of traffic, but you can already see it in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and specifically between the two, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. And so offering a solution that allows you to fly over the traffic, I think, is a really good one. It's not the only solution. I think there'll be lots of solutions.

3:22I think there'll be tunnels. I think there'll be, you know, roads will keep expanding, and I think there'll be flying options. I do think we'll have the most beautiful of all the transportation solutions to be able to see the cities from the air. I think is probably the most beautiful version of all those.

3:39In the beginning, it'll be limited just in terms of like supply, meaning how many aircraft can we build and distribute. There's a lot of community engagement that will need to be done. Engagement with the different municipalities and making sure it feels comfortable. Everybody understands the safety aspects of this aircraft. And our goal is to be a long-term player. And so, you know, we'll start slowly conservative and grow it over time. But the idea is for this to be a mass market product. And so the things that limited helicopters to scaling predominantly cost safety and noise, I think are largely alleviated by this product, which can allow you to build a lot more of them, which can ultimately allow a much larger audience to use them.

4:18And that's what's so exciting about it. It's not just a helicopter replacement. It's an ability to scale in the air in a way that helicopters really couldn't. The UAU really leaned in from the very beginning of the industry. in terms of advancing technology, advancing regulatory frameworks, and really trying to be a global leader in new transportation solutions. And so, Baba was an early investor. The Sabah Wealth Fund of Abu Dhabi is an early investor at Artstrom. We partnered with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office early to help build some of the core infrastructure and frameworks to how we would launch.

4:52We partnered with Etihad training and Etihad engineering from pilot training. and then there's been just, I would say, overall interest from the government to partner with cutting-edge technology companies to help make sure the UAE could lead in all new things. So they really just leaned in and I think the benefit they're going to get is early access to all this tech. But I don't think that's just an Archer thing. I think there's a possibility for the UAE to become the hub for new transportation solutions where lots of companies come. And Archer will just be, you know, maybe one of the early ones, but lots of will come because they see that they're heavily focused on this and it's going to be a great place to go launch.

5:37I think a lot of entrepreneurs, especially in the hardware space, have dreamed about taking a lot of the sci-fi gadgets and turning them into real products. And I think you've seen a bunch of those even come true. I've always had a vision of bringing flying cars into the mainstream. I think there's an opportunity here to do that. But again, I think like it'll start slowly and then all of a sudden, you know, be kind of, you know, everywhere. And so I can envision, you know, one day there's highways in the skies and that there are many lanes and that people are taking these aircrafts to work. They're taking them on vacation.

6:09And so I think over time, you know, if we look out, you know, 20 years from now, I think the world doesn't look quite different because of this product. The target price is sort of the high end of rideshare to start. And then the ultimate goal is to drive, you know, cost down something that's similar to car ownership, so substantially lower. The way you get there is by scaling. And that will take several years to build lots of aircraft and get this stuff out there and create the different routes that make sense. But I think that'll take some time for us to get there. I think there's a lot of trust by the flying public and the big aircrafts.

6:43So think like Etihad and Emirates and sort of the big brands that are out there. We'll have to, you know, gain the traveling trust over time. But I think that because the product is so exciting, there's a lot of early adopters that are going to want to come take this. There's probably more people that want to fly with it than we can supply for quite some time. So we'll just have to make sure we maintain a very high safety record. And ultimately, people will adopt over time. We'll start slowly and just kind of go out there and show how safety aircrafts are. So we've done, you know, countless flight tests in California, our whole base.

7:17And the goal will be to start operating in the Gulf. I think there's some new conditions we'll have to get used to. More sand in the air and more heat as well. But the goal is to start operations there, start slowly, and then learn a bunch and then expand from there.

7:42That was Adam Goldstein, the founder and CEO of Archer Aviation. You can learn more about the business by heading to Archer.com. And that's all for this episode of Eureka. My thanks to Monocle's golf correspondent, Inzman Rashid, for his report. We'll be back at the same time next week. Do look out for The Entrepreneurs, available every Wednesday. The programme's produced by Laura Kramer, with audio editing by Jack Dewars. And if you want to get in touch with us, email Laura on lrk at monocle.com. I'm Tom Edwards. Goodbye, and thanks for listening to Eureka. Thank you.