Houston, we (don't) have a problem

Welcome to Go Above Traffic.

The eVTOL newsletter that’s got more spice than a level 10 curry order at your favorite Indian place.

No time to waste, let’s dive in:

What you need to know in eVTOLs this week

Joby Aviation

Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi Oi Oi!

Joby applied for aircraft certification with Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) this week.

There is only 26M people in the entire country, but ’Straya makes for a good eVTOL use case. Major clusters of people in the large cities and a lot of space between them is ideal for Joby.

Joby has also applied to have its eventual FAA type certificate, validated in Japan and the UK, so international expansion seeds are already planted.

EHang

First we saw Ehang sign a few Memorandum’s of Understanding.

Then we saw them actually sell some eVTOLs.

Just last month they made delivery of some aircrafts.

Now we’re seeing actual flights go live.

The pilotless flights in Zhuhai (just north of Macau) are a mix of tourism and logistics. They’re being operated by EHang’s customer, Wanshan Development Group.

Zhuhai is vigorously developing its low-altitude economy and many Chinese cities are expected to follow suit.

The market for EHang is absolutely staggering.

China has about 145 cities with a population of over 1 million people. For reference, the US has about 10.

Air Chateau

Dubai gave luxury private heliport operator Air Chateau the green light to develop Vertiports in the Emirate.

The certification allows Air Chateau to start designing vertiports in compliance with requirements from both Dubai’s Civil Aviation Authority and the UAE’s General Civil Aviation Authority.

Air Chateau already operates a fleet of helicopters and manages an eight-pad commercial heliport at the VIP terminal of Dubai World Central Al Maktoum International Airport.

With that background, getting vertiports operational shouldn’t be too challenging for them.

They’re no stranger to eVTOLs either.

In November 2023, Air Chateau signed a provisional agreement to buy up to 100 Archer Aviation eVTOLs.

The Man Against eVTOLs

It’s always good to take an objective look at the other side of the bet.

Gregor Honsel is based in Germany and has been an editor at MIT Technology Review since 2006. He primarily covers transportation and energy.

Here are a few of this thoughts on why eVTOLs wont work:

• Flying taxis are an environmentally harmful gadget for the super-rich.

• Too many eVTOLs would be circling above, looking for a free place to land.

• They consume an unnecessary amount of energy.

• Excessive private motorized transport cannot be combatted by replacing it with another form of private motorized transport.

• A better new type of aircraft would be something like a flying long-distance bus. This would consume less space, money and energy per person.

  • EDITORS NOTE - IS A “FLYING LONG DISTANCE BUS”… JUST A PLANE? DOES HE THINK HE INVENTED A PLANE?

• They cannot let people get on or off every few kilometers.

• If you do not have energy-hungry vertical take-off aircraft and space-consuming landing platforms in the city, passengers have to get to the nearest airport every time.

• A high-speed train or a dedicated lane for electric buses would be much easer to set up as a feeder to local airports.

• eVTOLs could make sense between cities with poor rail connections and their own regional airport, but it would probably be more efficient to expand the rail network.

Good thing this guy wasn’t around when cars got invented. He would have been advocating for keeping horses as the primary means of transportation.

Here is a link to his full article:

The Markets

Or “The Casino” if you prefer the Wall Street Bets mentality…

A butterfly flapped it’s wings in Japan, and now we’re taking a beating in the eVTOL sector.

The numbers aren’t pretty, but it could be a lot worse. And who knows, we still could drop a more from here.

This week feels like Amen Corner at Augusta - just happy to get out of there with minimal damage.

The $100K Life Savings Bet

“I don’t throw darts at a board. I bet on sure things. Read Sun-tzu, The Art of War. Every battle is won before it is ever fought.”

— Gordon Gekko

Even though he’s a fictitious character from the 1987 movie Wall Street, he had some good lines.

“Greed is good” is probably his most famous, but this one hits home.

It also helps that Michael Douglas’ character was allegedly based on real life finance guys like Ivan Boesky and Carl Icahn.

Side note - Boesky was convicted of insider trading, fined $100M dollars and became a government informant. Look him up, fascinating guy.

The big takeaway from the quote is to be very thoughtful about where you’re investing your money.

I like to think that’s what I did before putting my $100K life savings into Joby. We’ll see if it’s a sure thing in the coming years.

So are we in the money?!

Nope. Not in the money.

We are down about $6,000.

Womp. Womp.

Looking at this situation from a glass half full perspective- we now know how quickly and easily this stock can climb.

It was bumbling along for months in the high $4’s and low $5’s, then shot up from $5.11 to $7.46 in four trading days.

So no need to be worried that we’re back down for the moment. Probably not a bad time to accumulate more actually.

Lighten Up

Final Question

What’s your biggest pet peeve on a plane that you hope doesn’t carry over to eVTOLs?

— best reply gets a shoutout next week.

Best Answer From Last Week

I asked “What celebrity would you want to randomly sit next to in an eVTOL?”

Best reply came from Wendy in California:

Middle seat between Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling. No further explanation neccassary.

Thanks for reading and let us know what you want to see more of next week. We read every single reply.

Stay above.

— The Above Traffic Team