Anduril, EDGE Group Utilize the Proprietary Electric Powertrain for Their New AAV

Archer Aviation apparently decided that next-generation aircraft manufacturing wasn’t enough of a business model for it and is expanding its offerings to powertrain sales. The company recently inked its first deal on this side of the industry, supplying its proprietary electric powertrain to Anduril Industries and the UAE-based EDGE Group for the Omen autonomous air vehicle.

The powertrain was designed and built in-house using nearly one million square feet of US manufacturing and test facilities. It reapplies several concepts found in today’s electric vehicles, featuring six unique independent proprietary battery packs that power Midnight’s twelve electric engines.

But as Midnight’s progress steadies out, Archer went searching for another source of cash that wouldn’t bring a multi-year design and development phase with it. It landed on Anduril: a company it has been closely collaborating with for the past year on a separate hybrid-electric project.

“As we’ve familiarized ourselves with each other’s technology, new and interesting opportunities to collaborate beyond the scope of the initial hybrid aircraft project have been uncovered,” explained Adam Goldstein, founder and CEO of Archer. “We could not be more excited to expand the scope of our partnership with Anduril as we open up a new revenue stream for Archer’s business as a powertrain supplier for next-generation electric aircraft.”

Omen is the result of more than five years of development. It is a hover-to-cruise Autonomous Air Vehicle (AAV) that is marketed for widespread application, including anything from long-range surveillance to disaster recovery. The general selling point is its operational efficiency while offering infrastructure flexibility that traditional planes just can’t match. With a commitment to 50 systems already coming in from the UAE, Archer has a defined demand signal for the new line of business.

“By combining the Archer team’s expertise in powertrain technology with a little bit of Anduril magic, we’ve been able to mature our propulsion solution to achieve the ranges, speeds, and payload capacity we need to make Omen operationally relevant for a variety of dual-use mission sets,” said Shane Arnott, Anduril’s SVP of Engineering. “The maturity and reliability of Archer’s powertrain platform de-risks our plans to deliver a production variant of Omen to customers at scale.”

FMI: www.archer.com