Work on Georgia Manufacturing Facility Underway
Archer Aviation, the California-based designer of electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft, and Stellantis, the multinational automotive manufacturing concern born of the merger of Italian-American Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and the French PSA Group—jointly announced at the Paris Air-Show that significant progress had been made on the two-companies’ strategic manufacturing partnership.
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With construction of Archer’s Covington, Georgia high-volume eVTOL aircraft manufacturing facility well underway, Stellantis has increased its strategic shareholding in the enterprise by dint of a series of open-market purchases of Archer stock.
Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares stated: “The Stellantis and Archer teams are moving full-speed-ahead in execution mode to ensure we meet our goal of bringing scalable manufacturing of Archer’s aircraft online in mid-2024. We believe this unique partnership is setting the standard for cross-industry collaboration and continues to be a key pillar of our strategy to ensure Stellantis leads the way the world moves, providing freedom of mobility in all ways. With our trusted teams onsite working shoulder-to-shoulder with Archer, I have no doubt that we are on the right path.”
Archer founder and CEO Adam Goldstein remarked: “At Archer, our goal is not just to get to commercialization, but to achieve it at scale. High-volume manufacturing is critical to ensuring we can meet this goal and joining forces with one of the leading mobility companies in the world is helping us realize the once-in-a-generation opportunity we have to redefine urban transportation. I couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve already accomplished with this partnership as we continue to lead the industry in building out manufacturing capabilities.”
As the manufacturing ramp-up phase intensifies, Archer and Stellantis are leveraging their respective strengths to facilitate the rapid scaling of aircraft production—to include manufacturing automation and component sourcing—for purpose of bringing the one-hundred-acre Covington, Georgia manufacturing campus online in mid-2024.
To actualize Archer’s ambition to commercialize production of its aircraft, Stellantis personnel are currently embedded across the eVTOL-maker’s manufacturing, engineering, supply chain, quality-control, facilities, and human-resources operations.
Initially, Archer’s manufacturing operations will be capable of producing up to 650 aircraft per-year with capacity for expansion to eventually support production of up to 2,300 aircraft per-year. Manufacturing aircraft at such volumes would render Archer’s Georgia installation the world’s leading—by volume—aircraft manufacturing facility.
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On 11 May, Archer set forth it had completed final assembly of the first full-scale specimen of its Midnight eVTOL and shipped the machine from Archer’s Palo Alto facility to the company’s Salinas flight test installation, where a ground-testing campaign is to be presently embarked upon.
Ground-testing is slated to comprise, in part, comprehensive evaluations of Midnight’s airframe, particularly its undercarriage, wheel-brakes, and taxi-dynamics; run-ups of its electric powerplants; and assessments of the mechanisms by which subject powerplants articulate. In the event Midnight’s ground performance conforms to expectations, Archer will commence flight-testing the aircraft in summer 2023.
By dint of vigorous intra-company testing programs, Archer seeks to thoroughly vet Midnight in advance of FAA “for credit” certification testing, which the eVTOL-maker hopes to see underway in early 2024.