DON’T CALL IT A FLYING CAR.
THE VEHICLE, WHICH LOOKS LIKE A SPACE-AGE TADPOLE THAT’S SPROUTED SPIKE-TIPPED WINGS, CAN TAKE OFF AND LAND VERTICALLY, MEANING THAT IT DOESN’T REQUIRE A RUNWAY, AND ONCE IT’S ALOFT, IT FLIES LIKE A SMALL AIRPLANE. MAKE THE MISTAKE OF REFERRING TO ONE OF THESE NOT-HELICOPTER-NOT-AIRPLANES AS A “FLYING CAR” TO ANYONE IN THE BURGEONING MARKET, AND INVARIABLY THEY’LL SQUAWK: IT SOUNDS TOO MUCH LIKE SCIENCE FICTION, LIKE SOMETHING THAT IS NEVER GONNA HAPPEN. (THEY ALSO HATE THE JETSONS THEME SONG AND CAN RECALL WITH SURPRISING ACCURACY EVERY NEWS PROGRAM THAT HAS USED IT.)
AS YOU BOARD, ARROWS guide you across a kind of bridge that weighs you. Infrared sensors detect if your luggage is hard-or soft-backed, and more important, if you have to wait for the next flight because it’s overweight. Every gram matters. The batteries powering this thing to 2,000 feet are electric. You will not be getting an extra ice cube in your drink.
This on-ramp procedure is still on the drawing board—in this case, the walls of Archer Aviation’s Mountain View, California, design studio, where scenes are annotated with dozens of handwritten Post-its. So when I enter the vehicle’s four-passenger cabin, I just hop in right behind the pilot’s seat. I set my phone down on the induction charger and lean back in my ergonomic seat, which feels surprisingly like a recliner for something that isn’t padded and doesn’t actually recline.
The trip is also something that exists solely in the realm of imagination, because what I’m sitting in is just a model, built out of high-density foam board that was sculpted in the enormous milling machine behind me. Archer, which was founded in 2018, has built a two-seat demonstration craft called Maker—it looks a bit like an oversize hornet envisioned by Ridley Scott—where it tests its technology. The four-seater plus pilot model, which Archer intends to unveil next year, is its ultimate production aircraft. Journeys of up to 60 miles, at speeds up to 150 mph, Archer says, will eliminate hours currently spent on the road, and these will be possible in 2025, because the company has vowed to have its aircraft certified by the Federal Aviation Administration by the end of 2024.
“THIS IS A WHOLE NEW CATEGORY THAT CAN LITERALLY CHANGE THE WORLD,” SAYS ARCHER CEO ADAM GOLDSTEIN.”
Archer execs envision building a next-generation flying taxi service, allowing people to leap over highway traffic in a vehicle to which we’ll feel so much emotional attachment we’ll buy an Archer directly to your plane. (Of course Goldstein believes that Archer will become a verb.) Goldstein, speaking quickly and forcefully, slips into what has to be his recruiting pitch, given that everyone I talk to at Archer utters some version of it: “The last time anyone mass-produced planes was World War II. We have a chance to be part of this new boom in aviation.”
