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.

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.

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.

FMI: www.archer.com