- Watch this:
I'm about to witness the future of urban transportation-
one we've been dreaming about for decades.
- Arch one, clear for takeoff.
- But first, let me paint a picture for you:
You're in an Uber to downtown Manhattan.
You travel 10 minutes to the local 'vertiport'
where flying taxi T379 is waiting for you.
You lift off.
Seven minutes later, you land at JFK.
This trip costs the same as a cab fair,
but used to take you an hour.
Right now there's a race among dozens of companies
to make that vision real-
one of these companies is named Archer-
who's betting that their technological approach,
balancing simplicity with performance,
is gonna get this to market first.
This is really exciting.
I feel like I'm experiencing the future right now.
But why should we believe this is gonna happen now?
And if it does, what would it look and feel like?
This is crazy.
I went to Archer to learn more from one
of the leading companies in this exciting race
to bring flying taxis to cities worldwide.
For almost as long as we've had cars,
we've had dreams of making them fly.
About a decade ago, advances in electric motors
and batteries made it possible to build
not quite a flying car, but something similar.
- Every major transportation revolution has really come
on the back of advancements in the engines.
- This is 600 RPM.
- And there's been this evolution
with electric engines, and it's really enabled
a new type of aircraft we've built.
- It's called an Electric Vertical Takeoff
and Landing aircraft, or 'eVTOL' for short.
- So the business model that we've been targeting
has really been around these 20 to 30 mile trips,
and we are building a piloted plus four-passenger vehicle.
The vehicle will fly 150 miles per hour,
and can fly up to a hundred miles,
but we will really only be targeting the 20 to 30 mile
type of trips, but rapid back-to-back trips.
We finally have an ability to actually realize our dream
of moving in around cities in the air.
- We are here at the, oh, we can't say where we are.
We are at an 'undisclosed location' in California
to check out Maker, which is Archer's demonstrator aircraft.
Hey, how's it going?
What are we looking at?
- This is "Maker":
This is our experimental eVTOL.
So we have 12 motors, and you can see
the front six tilt downwards for cruise flight,
but they tilt upwards to take off vertically.
Tilts coming up.
- Maker is a nearly two-ton prototype
Archer is using to prove that its design
can perform all phases of flight.
It's also collecting data their team is using
to improve its flight control systems.
- Again, we're all electric here,
so all of our power comes from
a central series of batteries.
So the energy storage system,
as a whole, represents six independent battery packs.
One battery pack provides power
for diagonally opposed motors.
- Got it.
- So we could lose an entire battery pack
for any reason, and we'd still be able
to control the aircraft.
The purpose of this vehicle, specifically,
is to learn as much as we can before we get into production,
so it's purely experimental.
- Right now, the team is flying Maker
in progressively more difficult maneuvers each day.
This is known as "expanding the flight envelope."
Is it time we're getting in here?
We're about to see Maker do a test flight:
It's gonna travel about 80 feet up,
head into the distance at 50 knots,
which is the fastest it's flown thus far.
There is a prescribed burn happening in the background.
Don't mind that-
that's totally normal.
It's gonna fly into that really epic background,
come back, and drop down.
Should be pretty cool, we'll see.
While those guys get Maker set for takeoff,
this group with a representative
from multiple engineering teams,
is getting ready to fly Maker autonomously,
ensuring no pilots are in danger during the test_
- So we got 29 variant 4 loaded up there.
Vino, it's your call tower.
- Arch one, clear for takeoff.
Selecting takeoff.
Executing takeoff.
Now, now, now.
- It's safe to pull up.
Tilts coming up.
Everyone's started.
- Wow, that's crazy.
Holy cow.
Here the team is monitoring data
from the aircraft's internal sensors.
Maker is now performing a "yaw turn"-
this kind of maneuver isn't possible
with a conventional fixed-wing aircraft.
It's now beginning a careful acceleration to 50 knots,
which is about 57 miles per hour.
Ultimately, their production aircraft will be able
to fly at almost three times this speed.
The aircraft sensors give the team important data
to improve the stabilization of the aircraft.
- A third to a half the way through the lick.
- Here's another yaw turn.
This hover phase is the most energy intensive portion
of flight because all of the lift is being generated
from its downward facing rotors.
Pretty epic.
Maker is propelling itself forward
with a partial tilt of its forward rotors.
The team's goal is to tilt those rotors fully forward
so they can generate lift from
high-speed airflow across Maker's wings,
which is more energy-efficient than hovering-
but they can't do that until they reach about 90 knots.
With each test, they're getting closer
to transitioning fully to wing-born flight,
which they accomplished about
a month after this video was taken.
What the team wants here is a perfect touchdown.
All three wheels hitting the ground
softly and simultaneously.
- Complete flight.
- While the flight test team gets ready
to analyze the data from Maker,
the rest of Archer's 500-person team is working
on a production model called "Midnight,"
the full-scale aircraft
they intend to certify with the FAA in 2024,
and enter into service the next year.
This is Julian.
He's the vice president of design and innovation at Archer.
Wow. Okay.
What are we looking at here?
- So this is kind of like the the buck 4.0 of our Midnight.
I think this is the fifth generation
and every time we build a new one,
we keep learning and keep adjusting.
- The so-called "buck" is a design prototype
made from wood and foam
Julian's team's constructed to test out things like:
How will people enter the aircraft?
Or how it will feel to sit next to another passenger.
The design process here is complex
because of the engineering constraints.
- The number one requirement for us really is about weight.
Everything is questioned, like, "Is that really necessary?"
We don't have allowance for extra cushion or padding
or features, you know, that is gonna
cost us weight, ultimately.
- Yeah.
Like that's pretty comfortable,
but there's no cushion like,
'cause you guys can't afford the weight of a cushion.
- Exactly.
So we're gonna have actually a thin cushion,
but we cannot afford to have really thick cushion
because more weight mean less payload.
- 'Payload' is the maximum amount
of weight a vehicle can safely carry.
It's equal to the maximum allowable weight of the aircraft,
minus the weight of everything in it.
The batteries, motors, airframe and yes,
even the cushions and the seats.
Every pound that goes into Julian's team's design
means one less pound for passengers and luggage.
- Everything is about subtracting.
So it's a lot more challenging, but there is like
an honesty to design that is diving in
with engineering to go to the bare bones of that aircraft.
- That's so cool.
This is really exciting to just sit here.
I feel like I'm experiencing the future-
the future of urban transportation.
You might be wondering:
'How is all this possible
and why is it happening now?'
- Whenever anyone asks me like, "Why now?
We've been talking about flying cars for forever."
It's because the key enabling technologies-
the batteries and the motors-
were never good enough to actually build a 'Bible' eVTOL.
- In order for an eVTOL to takeoff and land,
it needs a lot of power.
In order to fly long distances,
it needs a lot of energy,
but it needs this power and energy
in a lightweight battery system.
The metrics to describe these requirements
are 'specific power' and 'specific energy':
the amount of power and energy you can draw
from a battery system divided by its mass.
While 15 years ago, battery technology improved
to be able to realistically drive a car,
we now have batteries with both the power
and energy requirements to start flying aircraft.
- And that was kind of the key breakthrough here.
It's this specific moment in time where we crossed
over that threshold where you can now actually
build these things, take 'em to market,
build a real business.
- In order to get their aircraft
certified by 2024, Archer needs to work with
the FAA to make sure their aircraft is safe.
While some eVTOL companies are developing aircraft
to be flown autonomously,
Archer's aircraft is gonna be piloted at first
because they think that's gonna get them
to certification sooner.
I can just hop on in? Okay.
I got a chance to check out
their flight simulator where they test out
the systems their pilots will use to fly the aircraft.
And I gotta say, I had way too much fun doing this.
Yo.
- Don't hit the light pole.
- Oh. Oh, right.
Yeah. Okay, sorry.
Don't hit the light pole.
It feels so real,
like I don't want to stop controlling it,
I feel like I'm gonna crash.
- Once you go into VR
it's gonna be a whole nother experience.
- Oh my goodness. Yeah okay, let's try that.
- It's gonna up the level of reality.
- Okay. Whoa.
- This is crazy.
- And if you guys wanna see what he's seeing-
- This is wild.
All right, now I'm just gonna set her down, nice and easy.
Am I grounded?
- You are on the ground.
- Oh nice, okay. Yeah! Successful landing.
All right, where do I sign up?
In order to realize our dream of urban air mobility,
we'll need some place for eVTOLs to land.
I spoke with Brian, Archer's chief infrastructure officer,
about something called 'vertiports.'
- A vertiport is essentially a takeoff
and landing infrastructure for eVTOL.
So, it's a place that our vehicles can land,
make sure that they're maintained,
and for us, since they're sensor electric,
they need to get electrified.
It's a place for our passengers
to get in their vehicle and takeoff.
- When do you think
we'll see something like that exist?
- Yeah, for sure.
The way that we're thinking about it is
upon initial launch of market,
we're likely to be using existing, you know
electrifying existing helipad infrastructure
and aviation infrastructure.
It's not gonna be this epic city center.
We're gonna have to prove the business.
We're gonna have to prove
that this is a truly affordable, green,
exciting means of transportation for the future.
- At first, eVTOLs are expected
to fly within existing helicopter routes
already designated by the FAA,
but as the industry scales
more routes and vertiport infrastructure will be needed,
which is gonna take a lot of money and community buy-in.
That naturally raises the question:
Are people ready for this?
We all know the nuisance
of having a helicopter fly overhead.
What will dozens of eVTOLs sound like?
- So if you think about a helicopter,
it has one big rotor and the amount of time
it takes for the tip of that blade
to make one full rotation,
has to spin very, very quickly.
Now that just creates that loud
deep 'WAP WAP' sound that we know of helicopters;
it's spinning at almost near the speed of sound.
But the beauty with electric motors
is they scale down very efficiently,
and so now all of a sudden we have much smaller rotors,
which you can spin at a much slower rate,
and because of that,
you can change the noise profiles.
When flying overhead,
they just blend into the backgrounds.
There's still is some noise,
but the noise will be similar
to the sound of a refrigerator.
- Another issue people raise is cost-
whether urban air mobility will really be accessible.
- The cost to consumers is the one I think
that people debate, and probably rightfully so,
because there are a lot of factors that go into cost.
But the target is a $3 to $4 passenger-mile price.
So if you think about a trip like Manhattan to Newark,
roughly 20 miles, costs somewhere
in the $80 type of range, per seat.
What's less obvious, I think to the world,
is understanding where this industry will go-
and I think that's one of the more exciting parts.
Most future worlds that we see,
especially with vertical takeoff
and landing vehicles, are very dystopian.
But I think there's a way that we can build
a really positive future, sustainable,
with really interesting things to do that are
in and around our local environments
where we don't have to get on
an airplane to fly far away;
where we can really appreciate the local surroundings.
- It's hard to predict the future,
and there's still skepticism
about whether this will happen as scheduled,
and if the supporting infrastructure
for urban air mobility will emerge.
But if you look at the funding coming into the space,
the number of companies making real technological progress,
and support from regulators, it does appear
to me like this is gonna happen-
it's just a question of when, and who's gonna do it first.
- We're inspired by this kind of process.
- I think Archer will be a big part of the industry,
but I do think there will be several players that get
to market, and that's really important:
It'll help us build the supply base.
It'll help us build the infrastructure.
It'll help build this new world that we all want to happen.
In the end, that's the goal.