Flying taxis will launch next year … and cost the same as an Uber Black – Archer Aviation CRO

Archer Aviation’s chief regulatory officer Billy Nolen has said that the firm will be bringing flying taxis to market as soon as next year… and rides will cost the same as an Uber Black.

Speaking at Collision in Toronto, Billy (pictured above) said: “We are bringing a flying taxi or flying car to market, piloted plus four passengers and a carry-on bag. It will take you a distance of up to 100 miles at a speed of 150 miles per hour: and we are coming alive next year, in 2025, and we’ll start to scale from there.”

“This is happening, it is happening before our very eyes, it will be real and you’ll see more of this in this year and in 2025… what we used to think of as science fiction is in fact science fact.”

And asked about the cost of a flying taxi journey, Billy added: “Initially, that cost will be around Uber Black…our goal is that we scale and as we see the demand we expect, to bring the cost point down to Uber X.”

“Even as we come to market we are much cheaper than a similar mode of transportation if you were to take a commercial helicopter.”

Billy’s comments come amid estimates by JP Morgan that the electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) market could be worth US$1 trillion by 2040.

Earlier this month, Archer said the US Federal Aviation Administration has granted it a key certification that gets it closer to eventually flying travellers.

Archer is making electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOLs, and won orders and backing in 2021 from United Airlines, which says the new technology could reduce carbon emissions.

Billy added: “The business case that we are trying to solve for is congested cities, and how do we give people back more time?”

“Think of going from Newark airport or JFK Airport to midtown Manhattan, something that could take you an hour to two hours, depending on traffic: to now be able to do that in 15 to 20 minutes.”

“There are places you go today where you get off an airplane and you’re onto a bus. Imagine now being able to do that and get on to an eVTOL or a flying car and get to your destination, or from your home to your airport or wherever you’re going.” 

Addressing potential safety concerns, Billy said: “One of the things that makes flying cars so appealing is what we call zero single points of failure.

“In our model we have what’s called a distributed propulsion so we have 12 motors, six five-bladed motors on the front, six two-bladed motors on the back and the failure rate goes way down by an order of magnitude to much less than a helicopter or even other forms of conveyancing. “

Billy continued: “It’s also neighbor friendly in that the noise signature of an Archer Midnight is roughly 100 times less than a conventional helicopter.”

Billy’s comments were made as part of a wider discussion on flying cars as the next revolution in transport at Collision, which is returning to Toronto for its sixth year. Global founders, CEOs, investors and members of the media have come to the city to make deals and experience North America’s thriving tech ecosystem.

More than 1,600 startups are taking part in Collision 2024 – the highest number of startups ever at a Collision event. 45 percent of these are women-founded, and startups have travelled to Toronto from countries including Nigeria, the Republic of Korea, Uruguay, Japan, Italy, Ghana, Pakistan and beyond.

In total, more than 37,800 attendees have gathered at the event, as well as 570 speakers and 1,003 members of the media, to explore business opportunities with an international audience.

739 investors are attending Collision, including Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures; Wesley Chan, co-founder and managing partner of FPV Ventures; and Nigel Morris, co-founder and managing partner of QED Investors, as well as nine companies on the Forbes Midas List, and 12 investors from those firms.

Top speakers at Collision include:
● Geoffrey Hinton, Godfather of AI
● Maria Sharapova, entrepreneur and tennis legend
● Aidan Gomez, founder and CEO of Cohere (an AI for enterprise and large language model company, which raised US$450 million at a US$5 billion valuation in June 2024)
● Raquel Urtasun, founder and CEO of Waabi (a Canadian autonomous trucking company)
● Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password (a cloud-based password management tool)
● Dali Rajic, president and COO of Wiz (a cloud security platform)
● Alex Israel, co-founder and CEO of Metropolis (an AI and computer vision platform)
● Jonathan Ross, founder and CEO of Groq (an AI chip startup)
● Keily Blair, CEO of OnlyFans
● Autumn Peltier, Indigenous rights activist

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Useful links
Collision website: https://collisionconf.com/ 
Collision media kit: https://collisionconf.com/media/media-kit  
Collision images: https://flickr.com/photos/collisionconf 
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