Archer Aviation wants to take you up, up and away. We talk to the American eVTOL pioneer

Like many potential disruptive technologies, Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft were predicted, theorised, prototyped and over-hyped long before any practical solutions had even taken to the air. Emerging in parallel with concurrent disruptors like AI-driven autonomy, the eVTOL market is awash with potential players yet full-scale public services always seem to be a few years away.

Archer Aviation is one of the frontrunners in the race for this as-yet uncertain prize. Founded in 2018 by Brett Adock and Adam Goldstein, it is headquartered in San Jose, California, and its Midnight aircraft is currently undergoing flight tests on the route to imminent certification. Unveiled back in 2022, Midnight has 12 propellers, six to each wing.

The forward-facing props can tilt for vertical lift, whilst the rear ones are fixed to provide forward thrust. The design has the baked-in redundancy deemed essential for electric aircraft, with an expected operational range of 20 to 50 miles. Priced at $5m and built in a production plant in Atlanta, Georgia, Midnight can carry a pilot and four passengers and their luggage. The company also has an engineering hub in Bristol, UK.

Wallpaper* spoke to CEO Adam Goldstein and Julien Montousse, the company’s VP of design and innovation, about the Midnight and its projected use cases, routes and the expected debut date. One of Archer’s primary drivers has been design, not just in the corporate branding and presentation, but in the physical form of the aircraft itself. Montousse, a former senior director of design at Mazda North America, trained at France’s Strate, École de Design.

Wallpaper*: It’s clearly a very exciting time to be in aviation. What was the driving force behind Archer’s approach?

Adam Goldstein: Everything started with using multiple electric engines to fly a new type of aircraft. These are vertical take-off and landing aircraft. When you switch from combustion to these electric vehicles, you get advantages that you couldn’t get in the old world. It starts with safety. Helicopters, for example, have lots of single points of failure – instead, we have multiple levels of redundancy. You also get a lower noise profile and a better cost profile – there are both civil and defence applications for that.

W*: What’s Archer’s current timeline?

AG: On the civil side, we’re building the core aircraft and going through the certification process. eVTOL has resulted in a new category at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) called powered lift – it’s the first new category in 60 years. All that took a while to get going and we’re now in the testing phase. Our goal is to be flying aircraft as soon as we can. The FAA’s job is to pick a safe aircraft – their job is to tell us when we’re ready.

On the defence side, there is a different timeline. We have a partnership with a company called Anduril, which is building a new autonomous vertical-lift platform.

W*: Will the Midnight be autonomous?

AG: No, but the military and civil applications build on top of each other, so you need to gain all the experience, gain the hours, gain the credibility, gain the data, and then ultimately transfer that over. So whether it’s the framework on how to do it, whether it’s the actual hardware – the flight control computers, sensor suites, etc – or the software that you’re running. All that stuff gets proven out on the defence side and gives you enough ability to push over to the civil side, so they work really nicely together.

W*: Powered lift is a new category and that means all sorts of things that are new for the consumer, from safety to the way the technology is expressed and perceived. How do you translate that into industrial design that evokes confidence and clarity and explains everything it has to do?

AG: Electric engines scale down but remain very efficient. You no longer have to have one big rotor like a helicopter, instead you can have multiple sets of engines. The questions were how many engines should you have and where do you put them? You need enough redundancy so that a failure doesn’t crash the vehicle.

With two to four engines it’s very hard to stay balanced. Eight is safer, then ten, 12, etc. But if you have too many, it’s very hard to figure out where to put them, because when you’re flying, anything that’s sticking out just becomes draggy and hurts performance. You have this balance between performance and trying to make it look good.

We wanted a vehicle that created an emotional reaction, like a car. We want to bring the golden age of flying back – where people are excited to fly, they want to be in this vehicle, they want to touch the vehicle, take a picture of it. It’s a balance of performance and emotion.

Julien Montousse: The goal is to build an inspiring aircraft. Most modern airliners don’t invite connection – you might connect with the brand that operates them, but not the aircraft itself. We have four passengers and one pilot, and that intimacy requires some personal connection.

W*: Compared to the equivalent cabin size of a small passenger jet or other helicopter, what advantages does the platform and the technology give you?

JM: Weight is everything. We can’t allow any non-essential functions. The seats have to weigh just 20lb – they’re pared to the bone. And this creates this new type of design aesthetic that is much more athletic versus the opulence of a traditional private jet.

W*: How does this quest for lightness inform materials?

JM: We work with engineering to understand the load paths of the seats. By carving all the negative material away, we’re building a space frame-type structure. If you look at the seat for example, the seat only has like a quarter inch of cushion thickness. It’s extremely thin.

We’re also exploring circular design, taking some of the waste created by aviation and re-using it. For example, we collect carbon fibre offcuts and utilise [the material] as a kind of forged carbon to build parts of the cabin with. Bringing a circular design vision into a lightweight aircraft is something that no one has really done.

W*: Which elements are you most proud of being able to rethink them, taking those criteria into account?

JM: When you look at the Archer from far away, we wanted to build an identity. No plane has an identity today. We worked really hard to shape the lighting elements on the front, for example. A bird of prey was probably the most inspiring gesture that we embedded into the wing of the aircraft – it doesn’t look passive. We also wanted to show that the aircraft would fly beautifully just by looking at it.

W*: And in terms of the interior?

JM: The contouring of the seat makes you feel like you are connected with the aircraft, a kind of monocoque bucket seat that’s contoured to hold you securely. We’ve also designed a different kind of landing gear that allows for the aircraft to sit lower to the ground, which means that you can have that very fluid ingress and egress.

Other elements include a small display on the cabin, meaning that when you approach the aircraft, your name is displayed, your destination is displayed, and how much time you have until the door closes.

W*: What are the likely initial applications?

AG: You live in London, so you’ll know that Heathrow can be brutal to get to from the city. There is such stress associated with that, especially if there is traffic. I think that’s a really good route that we would like to start with. It’s our goal to target the high-end ride-share market… There are amazing routes all over the world; every city has two to three core routes that will always be busy seven days a week. Then there are also other missions like helping hospitals transport time-sensitive things like patients or organs.

W*: How does the operating cost compare to an equivalent-size helicopter?

AG: It’s substantially lower maintenance, with no piston or combustion engines. You don’t have to X-ray the gearbox to check for faults, for example. An electric engine is very simple. And because you fly much faster, you can do many more trips compared to something like an Uber.

Midnight has been designed around existing helicopter infrastructure, so we can fit within everything from the perspective of wingspan, weight and rotor downwash. As for charging, the goal would be to top off the battery every time you land.

W*: And what about timescale?

AG: We were selected as the exclusive air taxi provider for the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. That’s still our goal for launch.

Archer.com, @FlyArcher