By Luke Ramseth, The Detroit News
DETROIT — On a recent morning downtown, Eric Allison hopped into the backseat of a sleek six-propeller air taxi and began to explain his company’s vision for the future of transportation.
Imagine pulling up your Uber app, said Allison, the chief product officer for Joby Aviation, and ticking a “Joby” option. A car soon arrives and shuttles you to a nearby vertiport. A few other rideshare folks are waiting there, too, and four of you pile into the eVTOL, short for electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, along with a pilot.
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The 20-mile or so journey over a gridlocked city — perhaps to an airport, where you’ll catch a flight — is quiet and quick, as the aircraft takes off like a helicopter before transitioning to airplane mode. After touching down, it’s a short walk to your gate.
The cost of this convenience, potentially shaving hours of travel time, is expected to be a fraction of the cost of a helicopter ride today. Allison said the aim is for prices on par with Uber Black, the luxury vehicle pickup service.
“The advantage of this is you get the speed, and efficiency, and quietness of an airplane, and you get the kind of runway-dependence flexibility of a helicopter,” said Allison, a former Uber executive and NASA aeronautics adviser. “Both of these are really important for going after this air taxi market that we’re designing this for.”
eVTOLs are finally nearing commercial reality — at least in certain restricted environments. The Joby five-seater that was tucked away behind the new Hudson’s Detroit complex earlier this month for a gathering of tech, manufacturing and defense executives was just a display model. But other aircraft from the Santa Cruz-based company are undergoing rigorous testing. The company recently completed its first transition flights with a pilot onboard, and hopes to transport passengers next year in Dubai.
Archer Aviation, a San Jose-based electric air taxi startup at a similar stage as Joby, also attended the Reindustrialize summit. CEO Adam Goldstein said on stage that his firm aims to sell its first aircraft for use in Abu Dhabi later this year, though he acknowledged passenger rides wouldn’t occur right away. Archer is also a partner for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, where the company hopes to fly dignitaries and athletes around the city.
“The core concept was always, ‘Where are my flying cars?’” Goldstein said. “And the goal is to bring that dream to reality this year.”
Yet there remain major hurdles to overcome for the fledgling industry — which already has watched several well-funded startups go belly-up — before air taxis are crisscrossing major cities. On the technology side, eVTOL companies are working to improve their lithium-ion batteries, given the huge power requirements necessary for an aircraft to hover, said Blake Stringer, who directs Ohio State University’s Center for Aviation Studies.
A number of challenges have little to do with the aircraft designs themselves, according to the mechanical and aerospace professor who has studied eVTOLs for years. More real-world testing is needed to better understand the vehicles’ limits around things like heat or fog, and heavy air traffic. Costly ground infrastructure will need to be installed, like chargers and vertiports, with logistical plans developed for quick turnaround times.
Air traffic control systems for air taxis will need to be established. Stringer said this new type of aircraft won’t be able to rely on the existing federal air traffic control system, which is already overburdened and grappling with several accidents and close calls this year. Finally, he said, a new crop of pilots and maintenance workers must be recruited to keep fleets of eVTOLs humming.
“I would predict we’re at least five years away from seeing these in routine operations, in large urban areas,” Stringer said. For the industry to really take off around the country, he added, a large infusion of government support will likely be needed.
Policymakers and regulators do appear to be increasingly focused on eVTOLs. The FAA is working through a years-long process of design, production, and operational certifications with companies including Joby and Archer to ensure the new types of aircraft are safe to carry people. President Donald Trump last month signed an executive order creating a pilot program for testing “flying cars,” a development that Goldstein said could help accelerate the approval process.
“It signaled to the FAA that this is a clear priority from the administration,” Goldstein said in an interview. “The FAA has to decide which programs to work on — they have limited resources, and so it gives them the ability to focus on this. It also gives everybody else, all the partners, the trust that this industry is coming.”
Michigan hopes to be a player in the growing drone and eVTOL industry. As Reindustrialize was going on, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a directive creating the Advanced Air Mobility Initiative, which is supposed to help the state grow its expertise in drones and eVTOLs.
Among the initial projects funded: $1 million for the University of Michigan to create something called M-Air, which will include a 40-mile research skyway between the Ann Arbor campus and Detroit’s Michigan Central Station to test drones and other electric aircraft. In a statement, Whitmer described an intense global competition heating up to develop better aviation and autonomous aircraft, and said Michigan could “lead the way” for the United States.
Air taxi vertiports are likely to be positioned around large cities, executives said, allowing faster trips to the airport or other local destinations. eVTOLs, as their range improves, could eventually serve as transportation between cities — in some instances, potentially adding new routes that wouldn’t otherwise be profitable for traditional airlines, said Stringer, the Ohio State professor.
But eVTOL companies are also increasingly focused on developing versions of the aircraft for the military. Joby CEO JoeBen Bevirt said his company has been investing heavily in autonomous versions of its aircraft that are powered by a hydrogen-electric system that could stay in the air longer in a war zone.
“We think this is game-changing, being able to build autonomous aircraft that have unprecedented range and endurance, and we think this is critical to national security and defense as we look into the future,” Bevirt said on a panel at Reindustrialize.
Archer is similarly developing a hybrid version of its Midnight aircraft and has partnered with defense firm Anduril Industries, which specializes in autonomous military systems.
“In the first innings of this industry, the defense side will be substantially larger,” Goldstein said. “If you look at the first 10 years, and you look at the amount of aircraft that will need to be built … for the West and its allies, it should be quite a large number of aircraft, and so it could end up being bigger than the civil side. But time will tell.”
Joby and Archer have inked partnerships with airlines and ride-hailing services, with the idea that an air taxi ride could eventually be packaged with other modes of transportation that could be booked in an app.
Major car companies are also involved: Toyota Motor Corp. in the case of Joby and Stellantis NV with Archer. Both automakers have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the respective eVTOL companies and are providing hands-on support as they set up manufacturing facilities, executives said.
Joby announced this month that it was doubling its aircraft production capacity at a plant in Marina, California, as it looks to build more aircraft for flight tests. It has several other manufacturing facilities, including one in Dayton, Ohio, a refurbished former postal facility that will soon manufacture and test parts, and eventually churn out as many as hundreds of aircraft per year.
Archer late last year completed building a 400,000-square-foot factory in Covington, Georgia, and Goldstein said it has started making initial test versions of aircraft.
For the Archer CEO, a key junction for his company and the industry’s progress, in general, will be the Los Angeles Olympics in three years. Will the company’s Midnight aircraft be zipping between venues, skipping over the city’s notoriously hellish traffic, on a televised world stage?
“It acts as like a milestone for everybody,” Goldstein said. “Everybody wants this to happen. … Maybe the helicopter operators don’t want this to happen, but everybody else wants this to happen. So the Olympics is a really good way to show that America leads in aviation, that America is building a whole new industry, which will create a lot of jobs.”
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