Are Pilots Going Extinct?

June gloom is here, but that’s not stopping eVTOL companies from making progress.

A lot going on this week so let’s jump into it after this fun fact:

Orville Wright, the first person to successfully achieve powered, sustained and controlled flight of a plane, never graduated high school.

Bonus fun fact - Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, carried two things from Orville’s plane in his space suit - a piece of fabric from the wing and a piece of wood from the propeller.

What you need to know in eVTOLs this week

Joby

Joby scooped up the autonomous department of Xwing.

The California based company develops advanced autonomy systems that can make any aircraft capable of safe, uncrewed flight operations.

They’ve completed 250 fully autonomous flights and more than 500 automatic landings in Cessna aircraft using their software.

Not a massive stretch for JoeBen Bevirt, Joby CEO, to believe that technology can be successfully integrated into eVTOLs.

"The aircraft we are certifying will have a fully-qualified pilot on board, but we recognize that a future generation of autonomous aircraft will play an important part in unlocking our vision of making clean and affordable aerial mobility as accessible as possible,” said Bevirt.

Archer Aviation

The FAA has granted Archer Aviation The Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate.

Archer CEO Adam Goldstein painted a pretty rosy picture of the achievement saying,

“Today we have received the Part 135 certification, which allows us to effectively become an airline so we can carry passengers.”

In reality, The Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate is one of three FAA approvals required for Archer to operate an eVTOL air taxi service. They’ll still to achieve Type Certification and a Production Certification.

So it’s an impressive achievement, but you wont be buying tickets to hop on an Archer eVTOL quite yet.

Joby received the same certification in 2022 and still working towards commercialization.

Volocopter

Volocopter’s prayers have been answered.

After being on the brink of insolvency back in April, the company has been successfully financed by several existing investors.

Investor names and details of the funding aren’t being released due to “ongoing contractual negotiations.”

We know existing investor include Mercedes-Benz, Schenker, Intel, Microsoft, Blackrock, Chinese car manufacturer, Geely and Saudi Arabia based Neom, among others.

They live to fight another day and we’ll see if they’re able to have eVTOLs available in Paris for the Summer Olympics.

EHang

China has officially beat everyone to the punch.

After being the first country to fully certify an eVTOL, China based EHang is now the first company to ever deliver a paid for eVTOL.

In typical Chinese fashion, the purchase was made via a Taobao (often called the Amazon of China) by Guangzhou Helichuangxing Intelligent Technology Co.,Ltd.

EHang claims to have received $50M for upcoming orders, so this could be just the beginning.

Vertical Aerospace

Kakao Mobility, the largest Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform in South Korea, just ordered 50 eVTOLs from UK based Vertical Aerospace.

With 30 million registered users on its platform, the ride-hailing platform will incorporate eVTOLs into a seamless air-to-ground passenger journey.

Vertical and Kakao Mobility will establish a Joint Working Group to go through the commercialization process in South Korea.

With a strong economy and a population of 51M, South Korea checks all the boxes for a potentially successful hotbed for eVTOLs. Specifically in dense urban areas like Seoul and Busan where Vertical will no doubt target first.

The Markets

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

Like a pack of Christmas M&M’s, a mix of red and green this week in the eVTOL public markets.

Short term volatility is to be expected in early stage companies so keeping our eye on the long term play here.

The $100K Life Savings Bet

"Wall Street is always too biased towards short term profitability and biased against long term growth” — Peter Thiel

If you aren’t familiar with Peter Thiel, he co-founded PayPal and Palantir, and put the first big check into Facebook. He’s worth billions of dollars.

Not sure this quote means risk everything you have on a pre-revenue stock but I am going with that interpretation.

We’ll see how Wall Street values Joby once long term growth gets priced in.

That could be a while…

So are we in the money?!

Not quite. We started at $100K so down a hair.

But time is on our side.

With the progress being made at Joby and eVTOLs across the board, this still seems like a race worth betting on.

Lighten Up

Final Question

What year will eVTOL’s reach mass adoption? Where it’s not unusual to see one flying when you walk out of your house — best reply gets a shoutout next week.

Best Answer From Last Week

I asked “What state will be the last to adopt eVTOLs?”

Best reply came from Hannah in Colorado:

“It’s going to be a shame if any states pushback on eVTOLs after the green light from the FAA.

Leave it to somewhere like Kentucky to fight innovation when they should embrace it.”

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

WIll be