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Electric air taxis — vehicles that could whisk you from a busy airport to a city center without any honking or traffic — are not far away.
This vision is "no longer science fiction, but it's becoming science fact," Nikhil Goel, the Chief Commercial Officer of Archer Aviation, told The Cool Down in an exclusive interview. "We'll be commercializing our air taxis this year."
As one of the companies at the forefront of the electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle (eVTOL) space, Archer has partnered with United and Southwest Airlines to make electric air travel a reality.
"What's really exciting is this is no longer The Jetsons ... it's no longer flying cars or back to the future," Goel told us. "These are going to be very quickly in a place where we can fly them in cities with passengers."
In a conversation at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show, Goel walked TCD through how the technology will work, the company's new partnership with a leading defense manufacturer, and how electric taxis will create a "game-changing" experience.
"At Archer, we're trying to accelerate the movement from ground-based movements to air-based movements for people and things from A to B," Goel said. "Our first foray into that is all-electric air taxis."
Archer Aviation launched in 2018, and this week, the company announced it has raised an additional $300 million, for a total of $1 billion in funding toward its mission. The company's stock, ACHR on the New York Stock Exchange, is also now up 161.69% over the last six months.
And its air taxis are literally launching (and landing) every day at Archer's test-flight location in California. Goel told us the first operating air taxis will be seen flying in Abu Dhabi, thanks to a partnership with the United Arab Emirates.
"Our plan is, over the next year, to bring our air taxis there and begin launching them commercially," Goel noted, adding that in the U.S., the team is working with both United Airlines and Southwest in cities like San Francisco, LA, and New York City.
In October 2024, the Federal Aviation Administration provided a critical green light to eVTOL usage, recognizing them as the first new category of civil aircraft since helicopters were introduced in the 1940s and issuing guidance on operating the aircraft and pilot training.
"What makes Archer unique is a few things," Goel said. "We've really focused on design and building an awesome consumer experience … you see that from our aircraft and how beautiful it is. … We're focused on getting to the market quickly and safely, so we've really taken a pragmatic approach where we want to be able to start flying people over the next year, so that we can start to really showcase the technology."
"Let's imagine you flew from LA to Newark on United," Goel said. "You're probably facing an hour to an hour and a half drive into the city."
"It's a pretty miserable experience. What this will look like in the not-too-distant future is you would land in Newark on your United flight. You would be able to very quickly access your Archer vehicle within, call it, five to ten minutes.
"You and three other passengers would get onto the Archer Midnight. You would land, let's say, on the west side of Manhattan within about five to seven minutes, and you would be right there at your destination in under half an hour from when you landed."
(The "Midnight" is Archer's four-person taxi, which travels up to 150 mph and is 100 times quieter than a helicopter, according to the company.)
"That's pretty game-changing," Goel said. Archer can turn "what today is a pretty painful travel experience … into a magical, quick, and safe flight," he added.
Another example of urban air transport? Archer has partnered with SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles to build an exclusive "vertiport" that would help fans to and from LA Rams games and Hollywood Bowl concerts without hours of LA freeway traffic.
Air traffic control will manage electric air taxis the way they manage air traffic today, "but we're also helping modernize" that experience, Goel told us. "Today a lot of it is voice operated, so you've literally got pilots talking to the control towers," he explained. "Over time a lot of that… it'll start to become digitized, and so they'll be able to do that in a way that's really efficient and also really safe."
"Our goal is for riding in one of Archer's aircraft to be really affordable," he said. "So on Day One, think about it as kind of an Uber Black type of pricing. … Quickly we expect that we'll reach about UberX-style pricing, so think about it as getting from LAX to Central LA for $100 or so one day."
In December 2024, Archer announced an additional $430 million in funding and a partnership with Anduril, one of the largest defense technology firms working with government agencies in the U.S. and around the world, to develop a "next-generation aircraft for defense applications."
"We're going to be taking our Midnight aircraft and building a variant of that aircraft to work together with Anduril to build something that will [give it] extended capabilities beyond the consumer version," Goel told us.
For Goel — who has worked in the eVTOL space for over 10 years — a dream is finally becoming a reality: "I'm just so excited about what the next several years are going to bring in American cities and all over the world."
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