EVTOL Company Archer Aviation Receives Additional $55M Investment From Stellantis – CleanTechnica

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The automaker Stellantis continues to invest in the future of urban mobility, and not just its own cars and trucks and other ground transport options, but also in the electric aviation sector, as evidenced by a recent $55 million investment in eVTOL company Archer Aviation. Stellantis had already invested $110 million in the company last year, with an additional $39 million in stock purchases in Archer earlier this year, followed by this recent $55 million in funding under the companies’ strategic funding agreement.

We were led to believe that we’d all be zooming around in flying cars by now, just like the Jetsons, but alas, that promise continues to elude us. Evidently it’s much harder to design and build an airworthy flying machine than it seems 😀 and even harder to build ones that pass muster with the FAA. Who knew? However, it seems as if Archer Aviation is getting closer to making that futuristic concept a reality, potentially reshaping urban transport with its eVTOL electric air taxis.

“Archer remains on track to complete construction of its high-volume manufacturing facility in Georgia later this year. This first phase of the build out is a ~350,000 square foot facility on an ~100 acre site designed to support production of up to 650 aircraft annually, which would make it one of the largest manufacturing facilities by volume in the aircraft industry. Archer’s goal with this facility remains to establish a factory that can support its planned commercial ramp up by leveraging the expertise of Stellantis as its contract manufacturer.” — Stellantis

This investment from Stellantis came soon after Archer’s Midnight eVTOL completed a successful transition flight, making it the second of Archer’s eVTOLs to achieve this milestone.

“Transition is well known in the industry as a very difficult milestone few companies have reached. At ~6,500 lbs, Midnight is believed to be one of the largest eVTOL aircraft to complete transition, which is critical to being able to carry commercially viable passenger payloads.

“A transition flight occurs when the aircraft takes off vertically like a helicopter, accelerates forward, transitions from thrust-borne to wing-borne flight like an airplane with tilt propellers forward before decelerating and landing vertically.” — Archer Aviation