The automaker Stellantis continues to invest in the future of urban mobility, and not just its own cars and trucks and other ground transport options, but also in the electric aviation sector, as evidenced by a recent $55 million investment in eVTOL company Archer Aviation.
We were led to believe that we’d all be zooming around in flying cars by now, just like the Jetsons, but alas, that promise continues to elude us. Evidently it’s much harder to design and build an airworthy flying machine than it seems 😀 and even harder to build ones that pass muster with the FAA.
“Archer remains on track to complete construction of its high-volume manufacturing facility in Georgia later this year. This first phase of the build out is a ~350,000 square foot facility on an ~100 acre site designed to support production of up to 650 aircraft annually, which would make it one of the largest manufacturing facilities by volume in the aircraft industry.
“A transition flight occurs when the aircraft takes off vertically like a helicopter, accelerates forward, transitions from thrust-borne to wing-borne flight like an airplane with tilt propellers forward before decelerating and landing vertically.” —Derek lives in southwestern New Mexico and digs bicycles, simple living, fungi, organic gardening, sustainable lifestyle design, bouldering, and permaculture. He loves fresh roasted chiles, peanut butter on everything, and buckets of coffee.