I was gunna sit in traffic

Welcome to Go Above Traffic.

The eVTOL newsletter that’s more refreshing than jumping into a pool on a hot summer day.

Fourth of July weekend is here. Summer is in full swing. Now imagine not having to deal with the holiday traffic because you can fly over it.

Let’s get into the companies building that future:

Stellantis, the world's fourth-largest automaker by sales, invested $110 million in Archer in 2023. Now they’ve doubled down with an additional $55 million this week.

This weeks investment follows the automaker's open market purchases of 8.3 million shares of Archer's stock in a few months ago which made them the largest shareholder.

To say the folks at Stellantis are believers in Archer would be an understatement.

China based eVTOL startup Aerofugia has raised “several hundred million RMB” (between $13.76 million and $137.5 million) in a new round of funding.

The investment was led by Chinese state owned investment fund Orinno Capital.

Aerofugia said it will use the proceeds to push for the commercial operation of its AE200, a five-to-six seater eVTOL.

The company also revealed plans to provide flying taxi pilot services to the public as early as 2026 in Chengdu.

Not a bad place to start as the capital city of Sichuan has a population of 16 million people.

Eve Air Mobility locked in a $94 million equity investment.

This funding includes $30 million new shares and warrants to Embraer (the parent company of Eve) and $20 million shares and warrants to Nidec, a key supplier of electrical propulsion systems.

eVTOL Companies like Germany’s Volocopter must be jealous as they’ve struggled to raise capital.

Eve Air has letters of intent for 2,900 eVTOLs with a value of approximately $14.5 billion and potential service revenue worth up to $935 million. 

As always, be wary of Letters of Intent or Memorandums of Understanding as they’re usually non binding agreement.

More tailwind for EHang as the focus on tourism flights instead of air taxi services

China Southern Airlines, the largest carrier in China, has signed a memorandum of understanding with EHang to explore the development of “low-altitude tourism” in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai. 

Under the agreement, China Southern’s general aviation services unit will partner with EHang to look into flight operations involving their autonomous EH216-S eVTOL.

The two organizations plan to establish EH216-S demonstration sites for low-altitude tourism in popular tourist destinations in Zhuhai.

The Kyushu Railway Company, (also referred to as JR Kyushu) is trying to get ahead of the curve with eVTOLs.

They’ve signed an agreement with SkyDrive to conduct a feasibility study for eVTOL deployment in the Kyushu - a tourist hot spot in southern Japan.

SkyDrive and JR Kyushu believe that introducing eVTOLs in Kyushu will boost tourism and regional development.

eVTOLs should be a good fit with JR Kyushu’s broad “integrated corporate strength” playbook which typically combine railway station, shopping malls, distribution, food services, leisure, business services.

Aside from Archer seeing a big jump coming off the Stellantis investment, not a lot of movement across the board.

With a short week holiday not a big surprise.

Finance guys are in the Hamptons, Miami or Europe and can’t be bothered at the moment. The VC’s and PE folks in San Francisco are in Lake Tahoe.

Valuable companies take decades to build.

- Chamath Palihapitiya

Love him or hate him, Chamath knows a thing or two about startups and building successful business.

Notice he said decades. Plural.

Joby was founded in 2009. They’re 15 years old.

If you think this is a short term play, I have bad news for you. We’re only in the 1st inning. And it’s going to be a long game.

So the $100K investment I made in Joby is going to be locked up for quite a while. And that’s perfectly okay, because it takes decades to build valuable companies.

We’ll call it even money.

Technically down $1,300 bucks but nothing to sweat in the bigger picture.

Progressing is happening across the space and at Joby so we’ll patiently wait.

Don Draper would have sold Lucky Strike an advertising deal in the eVTOL space.

Then him and Roger Sterling would have taken the Lucky Strike guys out to a steak dinner and martinis and charged it to their account.

Best reply came from Ivan in Mexico City:

“That is the beauty of capitalism and what America does best. If you get to the top of the food chain, you get the rewards first. But the other great thing about capitalism is that it breeds competition and eventually someone else with come along and fill the gap for a cheaper price for less affluent customers.”