Life with out eVTOLs will seem archaic

Welcome to Go Above Traffic.

The eVTOL newsletter that hits harder than a Mike Tyson punch in the ‘80s.

No time to waste, here goes:

What you need to know in eVTOLs this week

Horizon Aircraft

And the executive poaching begins.

Horizon picked off Tom Brassington from Lilium where we was Head of System Design Engineering and named him CTO.

As the race to commercialization heats up, we are going to see a lot of shuffling among the top ranks.

Hiring is critical and landing the right person can change the trajectory of a company. You often hear the term ‘10x engineer’ - a single person that has the out put of 10 regular employees.

Horizon will be crossing their fingers that’s the case here

Archer Aviation

The USA government is a good customer. They can always print money to pay their bills.

Archer know this and handed off its first eVTOL to the US Air Force (USAF) for evaluation

The aircraft was delivered part of the USAF’s Agility Prime contract, which is valued at up to US$142 million.

The delivery comes after the US Department of Defense accepted the Midnight’s military airworthiness assessment – an approval that confirms the aircraft’s readiness for flight testing and validation for specific operational mission concepts.

Beta Technologies

Someone is going to need to safely pilot these eVTOLs and Beta is trying to get ahead of the curve

They’ve received authorization from the U.S. aviation authority to allow the their eight test pilots to offer dual-seat pilot training to additional manufacturers and FAA personnel in their eVTOL aircraft.

The real question will be how many pilot will be available (or how much will they have to be paid) when the supply and demand hit the perfect equilibrium and eVTOLs have the potential to be everywhere?

My hunch is these pilots wont be like the run of mill UberX driver…

Joby Aviation

Joby Aviation says their Dayton production facility will go live early next year.

They emphasized that Joby’s prototype production line in Marina California, near its Santa Cruz headquarters, does not derail its Dayton plans.

That Marina production line will be fitted for production of about 25 aircraft a year, while Dayton will have capacity to build up to 500 aircraft a year.

Or even more if that’s what’s needed one day.

EHang

Everything us up and to the right for EHang lately.

The China based company just reported a 919% year-over-year revenue increase for Q2 2024.

They delivered 49 eVTOLs in that time, which was almost twice the 26 it recorded in Q1,

The company also raised $76.2 million to strengthen its liquidity position.

Hard to argue that EHang is the dominate first mover in China and widening the gap every day.

The Markets

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

New Horizon, the hybrid eVTOL player from Canada made a big jump this week, as did EHang.

Other than that it was a very mellow week in the sector.

We’re still a long way off from all time highs.

And a long way from FAA certification and commercialization, so get comfortable with these numbers.

We may be here for a while so get comfortable.

The $100K Life Savings Bet

"You need to be patient in investing; the biggest returns come from being early, but also from being willing to wait for the thesis to play out."

- David Friedberg

You’ve probably heard of the All In Podcast.

You might even have an opinion on which of the four ‘Besties’ is the smartest and which one doesn’t have the intellectual horse power to keep up with the others.

Although opinions may differs on that, most people can agree David Friedberg knows what he’s talking about.

You don’t go from being a random early employee at Google, to founding and selling a company for a billion dollars with out knowing a thing or two.

When putting $100K into Joby, it is wise keep his quote in mind. We nailed the early part. Now we have to be willing to wit for the thesis to play out.

So are we in the money?!

We are down about $5K.

No need to panic. We’ve been here before and we’ll be here again.

This is the calm before the storm; in a good way.

The storm could be a year out or more. For now we’ll relax while Joby bumbles along this price.

Patience is our friend here.

Lighten Up

Final Question

Will this year’s presidential election have any significant impact on eVTOLs?

— best reply gets a shoutout next week.

Best Answer From Last Week

I asked “What credit card company is going to be the first to start offering eVTOL miles as a perk?”

Best reply came from Leo in California:

“Amex will offer lounge access at Vertiports from the get-go. Chase will offer 10x points for every dollar spent on an eVTOL with the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Are there people out there using any other cards aside from those two?”

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