Above Traffic's First Flight

It’s a beautiful day to jump right into eVTOLs, so let’s get cracking.

What you need to know in eVTOLs this week

Joby Aviation

The DoD should be pretty happy with early results from their partnership with Joby.

The California based company announced the planned delivery of two eVTOLs to MacDill Air Force Base in Florida in 2025. This follows the delivery of their first aircraft last year.

The $131M contract has room for nine aircraft in total, so this could be a kernel of something much bigger over time.

Learnings from government usage will be critical to fine tune its operation. Working out kinks should make for a smooth transition to running an aerial ridesharing network in the private sector. Partners like Delta, Uber, Toyota and billion dollar PE shops are counting on it.

Volocopter

A "Production Organisation Approval" extension from the Luftfahrtbundesamt (LBA) was issued to Volocopter this week.

Translation: Germanys version of the Federal Aviation Administration gave a nod of approval.

Is that a big deal?

Yes! It’s a huge milestone for the company. It allows production of Volocopter's flagship 2-person eVTOL they're calling “VoloCity.”

The VoloCity eVTOL could be available in the wild as soon as it receives type certification in late 2024. Originally, the aim was to go live by the Summer Olympic Games in Paris this year, so we’ll see if the new date holds.

Archer Aviation

Auto manufacturing giant, Stellantis, is getting deeper into the eVTOL world.

The name might ring a bell as they're the parent company of Peugot and Fiat Chrysler.

Stellantis became a strategic partner to Archer in 2020 and put meaningful skin in game in 2021 with a $75 million investment. This week they picked up an additional 8.3 million shares on the open market.

They’ve also kindly offered to provide up to $150 million in equity capital for potential draw.

The funds could fuel the construction of Archers 350,000 sq ft production factory in Covington, Georgia. (Which, according to Google, is an actual place where people live). The site should pump out 650 units per year upon completion and grow from there.

Eve Air Mobility

If selling pickaxes during a gold rush is your thing, then Eve Air’s play might be your cup of tea…

They've built a vendor agnostic software for vertiport operators and fleet managers. Their bet is that eVTOL's will need dedicated systems to integrate into existing commercial aviation.

And they want to be the ones to build and sell.

The software will complement the 5 seat eVTOL they are building. As subsidiary of Embraer (the third largest aircraft manufacturer in the world) they have the deep pockets to do both.

eHang

For a cool $332,000 you can get yourself the world's first commercially available eVTOL.

Head over to Tabao where Guangzhou, China based eHang is selling them on the e-commerce platform.

Depending on where you live your neighbors might be impressed seeing this in your garage:

With a max speed of 80 MPH you can go fast, but with an 18 mile range you wont be going far.

Why eVTOLs matter: Because traffic is killing you slowly.

Or at the very least making your life worse. 

• If you have a 45 minute commute to work, over a 30 year career, you will spend 10,800 hours in traffic. 

• Didn't Malcom Gladwell say you could be the top 1% of anything in the world if you do it for 10,000 hours? Why would you want to be world class at sitting in traffic?

It’s pretty well documented that commuting lowers your life satisfaction and happiness. But here is the terrifying part:

The negative impact on wellbeing extends beyond the duration of the commute itself, affecting individuals' perception of their quality of life.

Sitting in traffic changes how you think about life

So yea, seems like figuring out Urban Air Mobility matters.

The Markets

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

Its been a mellow week in the eVTOL markets.

3 out of the 4 horsemen, JOBY, Archer and Lilium are all down about 20% YTD.

Vertical Aerospace is up about 45% in the same time period.

Chinese Counterpart eHang is about even this year and sluggish this week.

Quick context for those of you at home - I’m betting my life savings ($100,000) on JOBY.

Aside from some random crypto, a condo that the bank owns more of than me and a used car, $100K is pretty much all I have in this world.

To say I have “high conviction” on eVTOLs would be an understatement.

So are we in the money?!

No… We’re basically dead even, so perfect timing for the inaugural Above Traffic newsletter.

Lighten Up

If you don’t get anything else out of this week’s newsletter, you can at least learn something…

You’ve probably heard these aviation terms:

• Pitch - aircraft's nose moving up or down relative to the horizon

• Roll - aircraft tilting from side to side

• Yaw - aircraft's nose moving left or right relative to its direction of travel

But why 'Yaw'?

It sounds like something you’d hear on a farm, not in the world of aviation. So where does it come from? 

Well, it has its roots in Old Norse. Sound familiar but not exactly sure what that is? Me too. It's the language they were speaking in those cold countries Norway, Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden in the 14th century.

It meant to fall away from the line of a course. And they were referring to ships. Because, ya know, planes wouldn’t come to be for another 500 years or so…

So 'Yaw' has gone from ships turning left and right in the North Sea, to what they teach you on day one getting a pilot license.

Final Question

When the first eVTOL is up and running in your city, are you jumping in and taking a flight immediately? Or waiting a while to see how it goes for the other human Guinea Pigs? — best reply gets a shoutout next week.

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