Flying cars are projected to be a $1 trillion market by 2040
Flying cars are projected to be a $1 trillion market by 2040. The story of two companies, one lawsuit, and the dream to rule the air.
Don’t call it a flying car. The vehicle, which looks like a space-age tadpole that’s sprouted spike-tipped wings, can take off and land vertically, meaning that it doesn’t require a runway, and once it’s aloft, it flies like a small airplane. Make the mistake of referring to one of these not-helicopter-not-airplanes as a flying car” to anyone in the burgeoning market and invariably they’ll squawk: It sounds too much like science fiction, like something that is never gonna happen. (They also hate the Jetsons theme song and can recall with surprising accuracy every news program that has used it.)
As you board, Arrows guide you across a kind of bridge that weighs you. Infrared sensors detect if your luggage is hard- or soft-backed, and more important, if you have to wait for the next flight because it’s overweight. Every gram matters. The batteries powering this thing to 2,000 feet are electric. You will not be getting an extra ice cube in your drink.
This on-ramp procedure is still on the drawing board—in this case, the walls of Archer Aviation’s Mountain View, California, design studio, where scenes are annotated with dozens of handwritten Post-its. So when I enter the vehicle’s four-passenger cabin, I just hop in right behind the pilot’s seat. I set my phone down on the induction charger and lean back in my ergonomic seat, which feels surprisingly like a recliner for something that isn’t padded and doesn’t actually recline.
The trip is also something that exists solely in the realm of imagination, because what I’m sitting in is just a model, built out of high-density foam board that was sculpted in the enormous milling machine behind me. Archer, which was founded in 2018, has built a two-seat demonstration craft called Maker—it looks a bit like an oversize hornet envisioned by Ridley Scott—where it tests its technology. The four-seater plus pilot model, which Archer intends to unveil next year, is its ultimate production aircraft. Journeys of up to 60 miles, at speeds up to 150 mph, Archer says, will eliminate hours currently spent on the road, and these will be possible in 2025, because the company has vowed to have its aircraft certified by the Federal Aviation Administration by the end of 2024.
Archer execs envision building a next-generation flying taxi service, allowing people to leap over highway traffic in a vehicle to which we’ll feel so much emotional attachment we’ll buy an Archer sweatshirt. (The preflight routine includes merch.) The company also intends to sell its flying car to partners, including airlines, so “maybe not on day one, but one day,” says Archer cofounder Adam Goldstein, you’ll be able to avoid the airport experience entirely, checking in behind security at a vertiport and Archering directly to your plane. (Of course Goldstein believes that Archer will become a verb.) Goldstein, speaking quickly and forcefully, slips into what has to be his recruiting pitch, given that everyone I talk to at Archer utters some version of it: “The last time anyone mass-produced planes was World War II. We have a chance to be part of this new boom in aviation.”
All that stands in Goldstein’s way are the fact that this has never been done and that there are more than 200 startups—with some 630 designs—also seeking to dominate this emerging industry. Oh, and one of those rivals, Wisk Aero, a joint venture between Google cofounder Larry Page’s Kitty Hawk and Boeing, is trying to sue Archer out of existence.
The first successful airplane took off in 1903, and almost immediately thereafter, dreamers began working on a flying car. The concept embedded itself in the public consciousness as the avatar of innovation, and ever since, this achievement has seemed both tantalizingly close, and in our inability to reach it, a sign, to some, of stagnation in American ingenuity. As Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund declared in a 2011 manifesto: “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”
Most of today’s flying cars—including what Archer and Wisk are building—are what the aviation industry has dubbed electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles (eVTOLs). In the last two decades, advances in battery technology, propulsion systems, and sense-and-avoid technology have converged with the societal challenges of paralyzing urban traffic and the need for more sustainable travel to advance flying-car efforts. Eccentric tinkerers have yielded to a big-money, high-stakes competition to own urban air mobility. “We don’t think investors are prepared for the scope of this revolution,” write the authors of a Morgan Stanley report predicting that this will be a $1 trillion market by 2040.
With that kind of potential jackpot, little wonder that Archer and Wisk, two of the most well-funded flying-car companies, are embroiled in a bitter court battle that is captivating the industry. Both are building electric aircraft featuring 12 rotors on a fixed wing, six of which can rotate downward, but how Archer arrived at the so-called “12-tilt-6” design is at the heart of the suit. Wisk, which is also working on a four-passenger craft, is accusing Archer of stealing trade secrets in the wake of hiring away 17 Wisk employees. Archer is countersuing Boeing for $1 billion in damages, the amount Archer claims that it lost because Wisk launched a “false and malicious extrajudicial smear campaign” that’s impacted its ability to access capital and has impaired business relationships.
The fallout from the lawsuit could certainly sink Archer, which raised $857.6 million last year when it went public via a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) led by billionaire investment banker Ken Moelis. The company has put zero dollars aside in the event it loses, according to its May quarterly filings, where it reported $704 million in cash on hand. Meanwhile, if Wisk loses, the embattled Boeing, facing challenges across its aerospace portfolio, could pull the plug.
Regardless of the suits, success is far from assured. In the version of eVTOLs that Archer and Wisk have built, the rotors needed to lift the aircraft are also aerodynamically draggy while in flight. As any aviation engineer knows, the transition from hovering to flying is one of the hardest things to pull off. One could say the same of the flying-car industry itself.