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The Archer Midnight can take off and land vertically using its 12 electric rotors. Mobility is changing, and electric cars are just one of the major trends. Elon Musk may have dreams of widespread autonomous road car use as well , and Croatian company Verne is following suit , but that doesn’t solve the problem of congested roads.
If we really want to get across the city fast, we need to look up – into the sky. The electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxi promises to revolutionize fast short-distance travel, and the first place to get a commercial service will be Abu Dhabi, thanks to Californian company Archer Aviation. I talked to Nikhil Goel, Archer’s CCO, about how the air taxi was going to arrive in the city in 2025.
Previously, Goel was a co-founder of Uber Elevate, a company with a similar vision to Archer that was sold to Joby Aviation in 2020 . “I've been in the field for 10 years,” says Goel. “I came to the UAE first in 2015 and met with Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who was one of the first champions for bringing air taxis to the UAE.
Then Mubadala (Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund) became an investor in Archer in 2021. They helped bring us to Abu Dhabi.” Abu Dhabi’s Positive Approach To Archer Air Taxis Archer has faced questions about the idea of air taxis from some cities, but not Abu Dhabi.
Goel says: “When I've come to Abu Dhabi, and I've been 15 times this year alone, they say, how fast can you get here? Chapter one of that culminated yesterday, when we held a signing ceremony with His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan , between us and eight other entities here in Abu Dhabi - public and private, federal and local - to support our commercial air taxi launch here.” “We have all the pieces in place,” says Goel. “The technology is there, the funding is there, and now with yesterday's announcement we have the local and federal support scheme.
We've got ADIO, the Abu Dhabi Investment Office, where his excellency Badr Al-Olama has been our champion. He's also brought in both public and private entities. On the private side, you've got Etihad Airways, which is helping us recruit and train pilots.
On the public side you've got the GCAA, which is the federal regulator that oversees the safe operations of these air taxis. They have helped put in place an expedited regulatory pathway so that we can fly safely and launch here sooner than the rest of the world. In addition to that, we're working with Falcon Aviation, who is the preeminent aircraft operator in the country.
We're working with GAL, which is the leading maintenance provider, and Abu Dhabi airport, which will give us access to public and private helipads to take off and land from. You need to work with both the municipal as well as the country level governments to do something as ambitious as this.” The Archer Midnight only needs a conventional helipad to land, not a full runway.
The Best Vitamin C Serums That Give Your Skin A Gorgeous Glow The Best Place To Buy A Mattress And Invest In Better Rest However, Goel sees Abu Dhabi as just the beginning for Archer. “There are hundreds of cities that want air taxis,” he says. “Abu Dhabi will be first, and that will be a lighthouse to the world to say, these air taxis are safe.
From there, I hope that we can build the center of the Middle East here and from that, you've got other countries across the Gulf Cooperation Council (which includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE), which I'm sure will follow. Saudi Arabia, for example, has great ambitions. We've announced a partnership with India, where we're working with Rahul Bhatia and InterGlobe, which owns IndiGo, the market leading airline in that country.
” However, while there is a lot of interest in Europe and America, launching an air taxi could be more problematic in those regions. “You need top level political support,” says Goel. “Here, in Abu Dhabi, we've been lucky to get support from the highest levels of UAE Government, and the Abu Dhabi royal family.
” Archer is far from the only company chasing the eVTOL dream, too. Hyundai purchased another US company working in the area, Supernal, and has been showing off concepts for a few years now . However, there’s a big leap from conceptualization to reality.
“In order to commercialize you need to raise at least one and a half billion dollars, and you need to be flying production aircraft,” says Goel. “To my knowledge, we're the only company that's doing both of those things. We fly every day.
We're in the final stages of the flight certification process.” Archer Midnight Air Taxi: On Test In Abu Dhabi The eVTOL aircraft in question is called Midnight, and its sustainable credentials are as high as its distance above the road. “We're 100% all electric from day one, we utilize the same advancements of lithium-ion battery technology as electric vehicles do,” says Goel.
“It also allows us to be quiet. It’s important to blend into the tapestry of the cities that we hope to serve. We designed the aircraft for trips between 20 to 50 miles, but we'll be able to go as far as 100 miles.
” The battery is about 400kWh in capacity, and cruising speed is about 250km/h (156mph). Midnight will carry up to four people, the pilot, and some luggage. “We built the vehicle to get to market as quickly as possible,” says Goel.
“We're using predominantly off the shelf parts. It's a beautiful aircraft that people want see in and around their cities. Here in the UAE, it's been nothing but positivity.
We've got a $6.2 billion order book across five of the largest airlines in the world - United Airlines, Southwest, IndiGo, Etihad and Japan Airlines.” The initial Archer Midnight design will have space for four passengers, a pilot, and some luggage.
Goel sees Archer’s Midnight helping solve the increasing transportation problems of overcrowded urban environments. “Our cities are getting more and more congested by the day,” he says. “Today, half of the world's population live in cities.
By 2050 it'll be two thirds. The populations are growing far faster than the infrastructure can handle. Roads are not going to be enough.
You're going to need to take advantage of the third dimension to get in and around our cities.” Initially, it will be the wealthy who can take advantage of the speed increase of air taxis. However, Goel sees that only being during the initial phase as the concept rolls out.
“Your laptop and your phone were once rich people's toys, and now it's hard to find somebody without one,” he says. “Air taxis will follow the same adoption curve as all novel and magnificent technologies, where at the outset, it'll be a premium offering, and then with scale, we're going to drive that to be as affordable as possible. Our goal is to very quickly be comparable to the price of the taxi or Uber.
” This will be augmenting rather than replacing existing forms of urban transportation, however. “There's always going to be the most efficient way to get people from A to B, depending on your route,” says Goel. “Sometimes it'll be the public transportation system.
Sometimes it'll be to take a car, and then sometimes it'll be to take an air taxi.” The Benefits of Archer Air Taxis Goel sees Archer Midnight air taxis as having three benefits over the existing VTOL urban transport technology – helicopters. “First is noise,” he says.
“We're up to 100 times quieter than a helicopter. We're also far safer because we have redundancies, meaning something could affect one or two of the rotors, and you can still safely fly and land. Helicopters have hundreds of single fault parts, where if any of those parts have failed during the flight, it can spell danger.
We don’t have any single fault parts. On top of that, we have a wing, so you can glide on the wing just like a normal airplane, if all the propellers went down. The battery system can go completely down as well.
The six batteries are diagonally cross linked, so that's also protected from an outage. The third benefit is we aim to be much more affordable.” Electrification will make the Midnight much cheaper to run than a combustion-powered helicopter.
There is less than a year now before these theories are put to the test as the Archer Midnight air taxi starts commercial services in Abu Dhabi. “We're probably going to start in the more rural parts of Abu Dhabi as we do our initial testing, and then it will slowly move into the city,” says Goel. “We haven’t publicized the exact nodes yet, but you can picture a five-node network that will largely leverage existing infrastructure so that we can get off the ground quickly.
” Archer claims the Midnight will be commercially flying in Abu Dhabi by the end of 2025. Aside from being positive about air taxis, the physical characteristics of Abu Dhabi, as a large city, spread across a network of over 200 islands. “Abu Dhabi is big,” says Goel.
“It covers 84% of the emirate, so you can imagine routes both within Abu Dhabi as well as between the Emirates, such as Dubai to Abu Dhabi, and to and from airports within the Emirates. If you live all the way on the other side of town, being able to get to the airport quickly, or vice versa, will be very popular. Imagine commuter routes, like between Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
And then you can imagine leisure routes, going out to the desert resorts or any of the islands that are difficult to get to.” The vertical takeoff and landing capabilities of the Archer Midnight mean that it doesn’t need a conventional runway. “All you need is an 18m-by-18m pad, and you can take off and land anywhere that you can put one of those like a regular helicopter,” says Goel.
“This is no longer science fiction. This is real. We're flying the aircraft every day, and Abu Dhabi is going to be the first place in the world to get electric air taxis.
We're going to launch here as soon as 2025. We have all the pieces in place to do it.”.
