Archer CEO & Founder, Adam Goldstein, Joins CNBC At The World Economic Forum In Davos

Thank you. These are electric helicopters. It is a long time coming. People have been talking about flying cars. When are we going to see our flying cars? And it's basically here. So the technology has been worked on for a long time. It started back in 2009, and over the last 16 years it's progressed to a point where the tech is ready, it's economically viable, meaning you can move enough people far enough, fast enough, and the safety standards are very high. And then the regulators came in and wrote all the rules to allow us to do this. So the goal is to launch by the end of this year.

One of the great applications of this technology is that you can take the single point of failure out of vertical lift vehicles. So a helicopter might have 200 or 300 single fault parts because you have a limited ability to add redundancy. But with this new concept, you have the ability to add a lot of redundancy. So if you just look at the aircraft, you can see multiple electric engines, multiple sets of propellers, multiple fuel sources, so our batteries, that's something you can't do necessarily in a helicopter. So you have a very high standard of safety. Also, the EV market has progressed so far, so much dollars have gone into that, a lot of that thanks to Tesla. We're at this stage now where batteries are very safe. We've seen millions and millions of cycles that have gone through. We use a commercial off-the-shelf cell, so it's all very well tested at this point. And so why do we need these?

Yeah, the air traffic control exists today because helicopters exist today. And so we'll start using existing infrastructure. So there are helipads today, you can land helicopters at airports today. The air traffic control deals with this stuff on an everyday basis. Now, of course, that needs to expand in order for our market to expand. So there's a lot of work that's been done. All the different countries around the world have been working towards this. NASA has been working towards this. How do we build the air traffic management system of the future? And so there's a lot of people that are interested in that. It goes beyond just making room for new vehicles. There's lots of other reasons to do that. Sustainability is one of them. Lowering the carbon usage is another example. And it's noise reduction as well, right?

Yes, so these vehicles have much lower acoustic signatures than helicopters. That's probably the single biggest benefit that you see out of these aircraft. So anybody that's been around on the ground when helicopters fly over are very familiar with that sound. These aircraft don't have that. The propellers spin at much slower speeds and create a totally different frequency, more of a buzzing sound. And so it's not as annoying to humans. And when they fly at typical 500 to 1500 feet above ground, you really won't hear them at all.

So there are lots of different categories that we look at to partner with or sell into. So airlines is a great example because the airport to city center use case is so easy to understand. Everybody leaves early for the airport because traffic is variable. You don't know how long it's going to take you. And if it's, you know, you want to arrive to the airport early so you don't feel stressed. But if I could cut that out and I could fly you directly to the airport, guarantee you that you would get there. And if I could land gateside and you just walk upstairs, now it's an experience almost similar to flying private. So you can really elevate that experience. But there's lots of other use cases. So take like a hospital, for example. Most hospitals have helicopters, big hospitals especially. And the reason they use them is they're mostly just flying doctors and nurses around. Sometimes they're doing different rescue things, but a lot of times they're really just moving people. And so the pitch to a hospital is, hey, here's a thing that is much quieter for the neighborhoods you fly in, it's safer, and it's lower cost. And that's a pretty easy pitch to win.

Well, I wish we had the picture anywhere. I guess we don't. We were going to put a picture of it up here, but go ahead. Oh, it's over there. Okay, yay, it's just me who can't see it. Um, okay.

So we just opened up our big factory in the US. It's right outside of Atlanta, Georgia. So that factory can produce up to 650 aircraft per year. So that's been built. The capex is in the ground, it's all ready to go. The stage that we're at now has to do with getting all the regulatory approvals to launch. So the goal is to launch this year. We will start in Abu Dhabi. There's a great network of companies and people and government that have all come together to make this happen. And so the goal there is to start putting that out. So if you think about the 25, 26 time period, you're going to be seeing something less than a hundred aircraft. We're not talking tens of thousands coming in day one. It takes time to build and scale up the operations. We also want to do it safely. And so you'll start to see that come. And as you get into the later half of the decade, you'll really start to see that scale up. And air traffic will have to scale up because, while you say that they already monitor helicopters in the area, you only have at any given point, I don't know, a dozen helicopters over a major city. But you could have 50 of these over the city flying. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you think about it from a business model perspective, there are thousands of airlines globally. And just the airlines as one use case, I mean, there's a defense application, there's a rescue application, there's all different types of applications. But if we just stick with airlines, let's say airlines wanted to just try this out and they said, okay, give us five, let's just test this out. And let's say 20% of the airline industry want to do this. Why would they want to do this? Because it can enable them selling more business class, first class seats, which is how they make money. So all of a sudden, just one category, a 20% trial of that, will equal thousands of these vehicles out there spread globally. So while you might not see them in lines across the sky in your city, they will be out there in the thousands. So the businesses can get really big really quickly because these are $5 million products. And if you're selling thousands of them, you can really start to generate a huge business. Then some of those airlines will convert to fleets, and you'll really start to see this pick up into the 2030s.