Archer Aviation is partnering with ride-hailing and parking company Kakao Mobility to operate electric air taxi flights in South Korea from 2026, if the company can develop its aircraft in time.
The move to South Korea is part of an international strategy that will also see Archer go on sale in the UAE and India in the same year. Rival Joby Aviation is also targeting South Korea in partnership with SK Telecom and UT, a joint venture between Uber and T Map Mobility, which integrates air and ground travel.
Under the terms of Archer’s latest deal, Kakao Mobility plans to own and operate Archer’s Midnight electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft so it can offer air taxi rides to over 30 million registered users on the app Kakao T for mobile, starting in Seoul. .
Archer says it Midnight planes it has a range of 100 miles and is designed for urban environments where the average drive is around 20 miles. The vehicle has an expected payload of over 1,000 pounds and can carry four passengers in addition to the pilot. However, the vehicle is still in development and has not received FAA certification yet.
“The vision is clear – reduce hours lost in traffic and increase daily commutes with an electric air taxi service featuring Archer’s Midnight aircraft,” Christopher SungWook Chang, senior vice president of Kakao Mobility, said in a statement.
Kakao also signed a similar deal with British eVTOL startup Vertical Aerospace, which includes the purchase of up to 50 of Kakao’s VX4 eVTOLs for the South Korean market.
Kakao and Archer are also jointly participating in the K-UAM (Korea Urban Air Mobility) Grand Challenge, a South Korean government-led initiative to develop and test commercial UAM technologies that can address issues such as traffic congestion and air pollution. The culmination of this challenge will be a public demonstration of Archer’s aircraft in South Korea in late 2024.
To help Archer’s early commercialization efforts in Korea, Kakao is providing the company with $7 million this year, with a second installment planned for the first quarter of 2025.
In total, Kakao agreed to buy up to 50 Midnight aircraft, worth about $250 million, including pre-delivery payments. Archer did not elaborate on when it expects to fulfill all 50 orders, or even the first. The startup-turned-SPAC has a deal with automaker Stellantis to mass-produce its eVTOLs and give the company access to up to $150 million in additional capital. That said, Archer still has to shoulder all the costs associated with this partnership.
In the first quarter of 2024, Archer $83.5 million in R&D spending. Since its inception, the company has incurred approximately $807.4 million in losses, per regulatory filings. Those losses will only continue to mount as Archer aims to deliver vehicles and build air taxi networks – which will not be profitable for some time – in the coming years.
Archer has also shared plans to launch air taxi services in Miami and San Francisco in 2025 in partnership with United Airlines and fixed-base carrier Atlantic, but the company has not provided TechCrunch with updates on those planned launches.
Update: Kakao Mobility and Vertical Aerospace have confirmed their continued partnership. This article was originally published on May 30, 2024 at 3:00 am. PT.
