Electric Air Taxi Company to Connect Five Locations in the San Francisco Bay Area

Archer Aviation’s electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, “Midnight.” Courtesy of Archer

SANTA CLARA, Calif.—A Silicon Valley-based electric air taxi company is seeking to revolutionize the way people move from city to city. Its plan is to use electric air taxis, and its goal is to cut down the travel time across the most congested cities in the world.

The electric air taxi company, Archer Aviation, announced plans to connect five Bay Area locations with its taxi service.

The company plans to provide flights to air taxi ports in Napa, San Jose, Oakland, and Livermore.

The press release states that the air taxi will replace one-to-two-hour drives with 10-to-20-minute flights and will be cost-competitive with ground transportation, although no dollar estimate was given.

The electric aircraft “Midnight.” Courtesy of Archer

Partnering with Kilroy, a leading U.S. landlord and developer, the company plans to anchor the taxi network in South San Francisco at Oyster Point, according to the press release. It has proposed that a vertiport be built at Kilroy’s 50-acre waterfront campus in the middle of the Bay Area biotech industry.

The vertiport could open as soon as 2025 and will be part of a mobility hub that will also have electric ferry service for all companies at Kilroy’s Oyster Point campus.

The company is also looking to expand to other locations in Kilroy’s portfolio.

“We’re thrilled to collaborate with Kilroy on developing infrastructure to support Archer’s air mobility service and laying the foundation for a robust network of landing sites throughout the Bay Area,” Bryan Bernhard, Archer’s chief growth and infrastructure officer, said in the press release.

The electric aircraft “Midnight.” Courtesy of Archer

Archer’s electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, named “Midnight,” can carry four passengers plus a pilot, a payload of over 1,000 pounds, and is designed to perform back-to-back flights with a charging time of about 10 minutes between flights, its website states.

It has 12 electric engines and 6 lithium-ion battery packs with zero emissions during operation, and it’s designed to still be able to complete a flight if any engine or battery pack shuts down.

Set to cruise at roughly 2,000 feet, Midnight has 12 small propellers and is expected to be almost 1,000 times quieter than a helicopter.

Midnight has the ability to perform a transition flight at 100+ mph. A transition flight is when the aircraft takes off vertically, accelerates forward, transitions to wing-borne flight like an airplane, and later decelerates and lands vertically, the website explains.

The interior of “Midnight.” Courtesy of Archer

So far, Archer has received the Part 135 Air Carrier and Operator Certificate and the Part 145 Maintenance and Repair Certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration and is in progress with the Type Certificate of airworthiness of the aircraft.

“Midnight is one giant step closer to taking passengers into the sky in the coming years in the U.S. The final airworthiness criteria for Midnight is an important step on our journey to make electric flying taxis an everyday reality,” Archer’s chief regulatory affairs officer, Billy Nolen, said in a press release.

Additionally, in 2022, Archer partnered with United Airlines, which placed a $1.5 billion order for hundreds of its aircraft.

Archer has announced several planned routes, with one connecting Newark Liberty International Airport to a downtown Manhattan heliport located near Battery Park on Pier 6, as part of Archer’s plan to launch an Urban Air Mobility network in the New York Metropolitan Area.

Additionally, Archer has partnered with Signature Aviation to gain access to install rapid charging stations and fly out of over 200 airports across the U.S. and globally, including New York, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Texas.

Midnight” being assembled. Courtesy of Archer

It has also partnered with the car manufacturer Stellantis to build a 350,000-square-foot manufacturing facility on a 100-acre site in Georgia, which is on track to be finished later this year. They plan to produce up to 650 aircraft annually with potential to ramp up production to 2,300 annually.

“At Archer, our goal is not just to get to commercialization, but to achieve it at scale. High-volume manufacturing is critical to ensuring we can meet this goal and joining forces with one of the leading mobility companies in the world is helping us realize the once-in-a-generation opportunity we have to redefine urban transportation,” Archer’s founder and CEO, Adam Goldstein, said in a press release.

Archer has also announced plans to launch its air taxi operations globally by partnering with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office, Falcon Aviation, and Air Chateau in the United Arab Emirates; InterGlobe, the owner of India’s largest airline; and KakaoMobility, the “Uber of Korea.”

Last year, Archer expanded its partnership with the Department of Defense (DoD), signing contracts worth up to $142 million with the U.S. Air Force. It will deliver up to six “Midnight” aircraft to the Air Force, and it will help the Air Force explore the potential of vertical flight and electric aircraft for DoD purposes.

The electric aircraft “Midnight.” Courtesy of Archer