Archer’s Midnight air taxi on display at the Paris Air Show.
LE BOURGET—The chief executives of Archer Aviation and Stellantis announced new progress on their air taxi manufacturing partnership, with the companies now pivoting from “concept phase” to “execution phase,” according to Archer.
Construction toward Archer’s Georgia-based high-rate manufacturing facility—located on a 100-acre campus adjacent to Covington Municipal Airport—is “well underway” and on track to come online by mid-2024, Archer CEO Adam Goldstein said June 19 during a presentation at the Paris Air Show here. Archer is displaying its Midnight electric-vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) aircraft.
The companies said they expect initial manufacturing operations at the Covington plant to be capable of producing up to 650 eVTOLs per year, with production capacity there eventually reaching up to 2,300 air taxis per year.
Stellantis personnel are already working full-time alongside the Archer team to support operational readiness at the high-rate production facility. Stellantis employees are embedded across Archer's divisions including manufacturing, engineering, supply chain, quality, facilities and human resources, Archer said, identifying automation and component sourcing as current priorities.
“We bring what they need, which is high-volume manufacturing skills with a strong focus on safety and quality, as well as sharing in terms of technology, battery tech, IT [information technology] efficiency and so on,” Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said of the Archer partnership. “We have around 30 to 40 people from Stellantis that are working full-time collaborating with Archer, mostly in manufacturing.”
As part of their strategic partnership, Stellantis recently increased its stake in Archer by purchasing additional stock on the open market. While the company did not disclose the size of the investment, Tavares said it has no intention of taking control of Archer.
“It is our intention to stay a minority shareholder for the simple reason that we want Archer to continue to operate with the dynamics and agility of a startup mindset,” Tavares said. “That way we can protect what is best at Archer, which is agility, creativity, speed and focus on the execution.”
Goldstein said that 2024 will be a “huge year” for Archer, during which the company will be performing for-credit flight tests multiple times per day using at least six piloted eVTOLs, racking up “thousands and thousands” of test flights leading up to planned type certification late next year.
“It’s really an exciting time for the whole eVTOL industry where we’re moving into the flight test for credit phase with the FAA,” Goldstein said. “It’s really an exciting time, and I think people will start to understand how big this industry can be and really how great the consumer experience can be—and that all comes to life next year.”
