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for our next panel we are going to have uh a quick introduction to each of the three electric vertical takeoff and
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Landing vehicle companies the evall companies we'll see a video for uh introducing Joby and then uh Adam from
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Archer is going to introduce Archer and then Brian from wi and then we're going to have a conversation uh be back in a
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minute [Music] [Music] [Music] w I founded archer in 2018 to change the way the world
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moves Urban congestion isn't sustainable this leaves the average American stuck in traffic for dozens of hours per
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year to combat that challenge we built [Music] midnight all electric aircraft purpose-built to fly back-to-back trips
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over congested [Music] cities midnight takes off vertically like a helicopter then his propellers
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transition down to fly like an airplane it's designed to be piloted and carry four passengers and can travel at speeds
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up to 150 mph since 2018 we've made an incredible amount of progress to bringing the
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midnight aircraft to Market our nearly 10,000 person team has designed built and tested the key
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enabling Technologies to bring electric Aviation to Market this has enabled us to raise nearly $1.5 billion to
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get however our goal is the same since day one to get to commercial [Music] launch our high volume manufacturing
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facility in Georgia will open up later this year and we have incredible partners that are helping us bring this
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Vision to [Music] life stellantis the owner of Jeep Ram and Maserati has invested nearly $300
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million to date United Airlines has ordered up to $1.5 billion of midnight aircraft and
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with Southwest our goal is to offer passengers 3-hour multimodal Journeys across
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[Music] Cali we have an industry-leading contract with Air Force and we recently
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delivered our first aircraft as part of that contract in La we recently announced
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plans for flight networks connecting Sofi Stadium USC LAX and Beyond we can't wait to bring midnight to a city near
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Europe [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Peter teal reminded us yesterday that
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flying cars are the peak of the hardware Revolution that never quite happened but
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as you just saw we're closer than ever to making it a reality the aircraft that the three of our companies design take
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off vertically like helicopters they do a complex maneuver to transition onto the wing into wingborne flight and Fly
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Like an aircraft when the founder of our company Larry Page first joined this Mission the technologies that enable
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these aircraft to fly were just starting to become possible the team that I lead
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has built the enabling Technologies in electrification and autonomy that's making this possible you see the prior
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five generations of aircraft that we've designed here on the screen behind me and that iterative design build approach
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has enabled us to get to the point where we are building now Generation 6 which is the first candidate for an fa
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certification of a passenger autonomous aircraft this aircraft is designed to take advantage of all of the prior
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technologies that we developed through those prior iterations and to operate without a pilot on board on those
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missions there's two technology trends that we are all uh in that we are all using to create these aircraft Motors
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and the the same simplification that's coming to your cars and batteries and the same advances that are coming to
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your cars and also to your cell phones and second autonomy and autonomy has a lot of parts to it so we have to for the
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first time in a commercially certifiable way show how we can operate and supervise an aircraft from the ground
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display information in in a way that is safe from a human factor standpoint to supervise that aircraft to use sensors
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on the airplane in the same way you would for an autonomous ground vehicle to create the software and the
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computation to be able to then fly that aircraft autonomously but when you make robots people don't go away they change
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what they're doing and so we use those aircraft to actually do deployment testing in networks here in Los Angeles
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yeah last year we flew the first electric Vall aircraft in the Los Angeles area and we showed what's
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possible with these aircraft and how people can engage with them we are also working on the human interface with air
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traffic control because again even though we have an autonomous aircraft our aircraft still has to interface with
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today's air traffic control system like what you saw yesterday from weo we use existing flying cars AKA helicopters
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that are piloted to take that sensor package and those computation uh abilities and put them onto of a a
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piloted helicopter to perfect the algorithms that we use for doing things like Det protecting and avoiding other
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traffic in environments uh where there's different lighting and where the aircraft that you might collide with
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potentially that you want to avoid is above or below the Horizon we also have to be able to fly these aircraft without
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the presence of GPS as we see in conflicts around the world today we cannot rely on GPS to be able to fly an
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autonomous aircraft so now once you have that technology stack you need to turn it into an actual airplane and all the
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things that Peter talked about about potentially being a bad industry to to go into uh in the 9s are now becoming
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ever more important the ability to uh do aerodynamics to do mechanical engineering to create these aircraft are
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now more important than ever and uh by the end of this year we'll be flying this aircraft which will be the first
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attempt at certifying a passenger carrying autonomous aircraft so let's bring the guys out and we'll talk about
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it all right well I think that there's a lot of people that probably need an introduction to Vall in a more basic way
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before we talk about the technology whether it's the actual vehicle itself or whether it's the um the world's best
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pilot if you will MH um for the folks out here if they are going to interact with these systems
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whether autonomous or not what do you think are going to be the biggest issues that they are going to care about and
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will want resolved before they see it in their Community maybe Joe B if you want
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to start yeah I think the number one issue and you know for everybody when you're getting in an aircraft is is this
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going to be safe but then for both the the passengers what they care about is is something that's going to
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dramatically change the way they they move around their cities and save them time and in order to do that you need to
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have takeoff and landing locations that are located both close to where you are and close to where you want to go and so
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priority uh 2 through n in people's priority stack is about noise and making an acoustic signature that's going to uh
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get communities to see this as uh a a real advantage and uh something that's uh increases the value of uh of living
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in that Community because you're you're close to this new mode of transportation um do you guys think that
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when you see a thousand of these things flying around let's let's just take a place uh in Meno Park
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California um are they going to be forced to have very specific sort of like air highways
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that they have to adhere to or what is the best thinking right now in terms of how the regulatory bodies are going to
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sort of enable you guys to actually fly commercially as quickly as possible he brand turn you if we if we just take a
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step back the product exists they're called helicopters and a helicopter is actually way more complex than what
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we're building we're actually building a much more simplified version of what exists it's safer it's fully redundant
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and so it should Inspire confidence for people to to want to come and take these
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vehicles the way they'll start though is going to be really slow if you think about every major city in the world they
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have hospitals those hospitals have helicopters this product exists everywhere so if you took all three of
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us you took our most bullish estimates that we have and you tripled them we still would not even replace helicopters
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so to get to the point where you're asking thousands of vehicles in the air over one city or even hundreds is pretty
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far away we could all deploy tens of thousands of vehicles we could the three of us be a trillion dollar companies and
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there still would not be thousand hopefully there still would not be you know thousands of vehicles in the air
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but to make the product really really great you do want liquidity you do want a lot of vehicles in on dense routes so
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you don't have to worry about is it available is it not available like an Uber right you just it's thumbs up it's
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available or thumbs down it's not available it doesn't matter what seat you get it saves your time that's where
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we're all trying to get but I think just to frame it sorry Adam is it is it a thing where it is like uber where
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there's going to be a version where you get in with people you don't know or you
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think this is just like one person Provisions it for themselves and then they go from point A to point B no
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absolutely the vision is uh you know a service that's available for everyone the good news is you can scale these
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vehicles because they're just much more simple than helicopters we don't have all the limiting factors that
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helicopters have so you can put a lot more from the air you can push the prices way down and make it very
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affordable Bri it's also a dramatically faster trip so you're you're in it for a
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few minutes to get across La instead of in in Uber where you might be sitting in
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traffic for an hour or two right um yesterday we heard from Teedra from the CEO of weo their first launch city was
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Phoenix the layout was good but mostly it was really regulatorily um amenable amenable um Brian what is the version of
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Phoenix for Evol is there a city somewhere that has said we want this now come and help us figure this out yeah
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Houston Houston is is where we're working most specifically um and it's not just because Woody lives there
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either um but but seriously Houston is um you know the the Airport network in Houston is actually quite good
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connecting couple of the airports around uh the Houston area it turns out that operating at airports initially is
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actually quite a good place to start because like I said you know these aircraft they come with a footprint you
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know they really come with like people and operations and if you've ever seen an airport tarmac area um it's you can't
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just drop that in the middle of a city on day one so starting at airports as an initial operating area is quite good um
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it turns out you know what you saw in that video was from an airspace integration standpoint and where we were
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going on routes and so on um New Zealand is has been incredibly Forward Thinking
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in terms of how to evolve their airspace Network so they have more um digital Communications more of an ability to
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integrate un crude aircraft with crude aircraft in the same airspace and so we've been doing quite a lot of work in
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New Zealand on that front but hold on I I mean I think it's to me super clear this does not start in the US I really
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think it starts internationally I think the regulatory environment here both both of us work in the UAE pretty
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extensively I mean if I'm going to guess just on the press that you put out Joe B
00:14:04
met the head of the um civil aviation Authority in the UAE yesterday I'm leaving tonight on a plane to go meet
00:14:09
him as well and so you know we are targeting Abu Dhabi they've been targeting Dubai and the reason is there
00:14:16
is a you know a very heavy support for new innovation and the challenge like the reason why I feel like all three of
00:14:23
us are up on stage here is probably because of the the whole Woody video that we just watched we all learned
00:14:29
about NASA as young kids and were inspired by new things but the challenge is the existing environment today makes
00:14:37
that very hard and these are companies that were started in America with American Engineers that have raised
00:14:43
capital from the American Venture community that are listed on the American stock exchanges yet we still
00:14:48
can't launch in America and that is really challenging and I think part of it is back to what Bill Gurley talked
00:14:55
about last year a regulatory capture the walls are huge to climb and in fact the
00:15:00
more things go bad with the incumbents the harder it is for us I don't think that's done on purpose but that's very
00:15:05
challenging for us now I I I would I would say that the amount of bipartisan support on on both sides of the aisle in
00:15:12
Washington is off the charts the amount of local support uh support with States uh it the you know yesterday I was in
00:15:21
Montreal at the uh International civil aviation uh Association conference uh where they ConEd this is the first time
00:15:30
and they were convening 1800 people uh to focus on uh Advanced Air mobility and so this is really exciting to see how
00:15:40
much momentum there is and it's imperative that the US continue to lead Aviation is one of our most important
00:15:45
exports uh it's been vital to our economy and it is really really important that uh we we lean forward and
00:15:54
we make the the certification process and just to double click on this for a second I can see how Joe Ben and Adam
00:16:00
you guys Pure Play startups you know you have to find the Willing parent um but you have the benefit of
00:16:10
Boeing mhm um and is that why your answer was Houston is because they have that I guess regulatory gravitas to be
00:16:18
able to go and help there or no you're still mostly on your own trying to figure no no yeah so we so the yeah the
00:16:23
Journey of our company was obviously you know started by Larry started by Larry became Kittyhawk turned into a joint
00:16:29
Venture and and uh and and eventually um we sold the company to Boeing uh last year and uh so we still operate as an
00:16:37
independent company a lot like the whmo um Google relationship right now uh for us the difference is we're really trying
00:16:44
to Pioneer the pathway to the introduction of autonomous aircraft at the same time and that's a longer
00:16:50
Journey so Joe Ben and Adam are are going to be operating before us there's no doubt because piloted aircraft are
00:16:56
coming before these uncrewed aircraft um I think autonomy is key to the future of aviation in the small airplane space
00:17:04
if you look at the the um the the the causes of of incidents and the accident rates in helicopters right now they're
00:17:11
just unacceptable and um and I think that that can be solved by automation I'm really passionate about that so for
00:17:18
us we're on a longer journey and the question is then uh on that Journey um how do we make sure that the US leads in
00:17:25
that and we're trying to Pioneer the regulatory Pathway to ensure that it happens here in the United States but
00:17:31
we're also working around the globe like I mentioned in New Zealand where there are Regulators who potentially want to
00:17:37
lean forward and innovate on airospace or some other aspects of the problem that we're trying to solve I mean Adam
00:17:42
Adam mentioned the concept of regulatory capture but one of our besties Sky Dayton who's on joby's board wrote this
00:17:48
great essay and one of the things that's clear is that a lot of the pushback to the vision that you have Brian actually
00:17:55
comes from the pilots unions themselves right I I think it's a bit of a weird set of incentives no do you want to just
00:18:01
talk about that for a second I think it's less salacious than that and more uh clinical I mean the the and I'll give
00:18:07
an example well so I have my vision for the future is that we're going to have a
00:18:10
prolific amount of uncrewed small aircraft that are operating doing that kind of missions that we're just talking
00:18:15
about but that large C pilot large aircraft are going to be piloted for probably as far as the eye can see I
00:18:22
think the Practical aspect of it honestly is that in 2023 here's a statistic for you that just blows my
00:18:28
mind as a developer of airplanes in 2023 there were 30 million Global flights carried billions of Passenger implements
00:18:36
number of people that got on board the airplane um scheduled service you know Airlines zero accidents zero what zero
00:18:45
in 2023 zero so so it's it's less salacious than than uh there's a cabal that's trying not to certificate things
00:18:55
there is a natural conservatism in the system of holy we've done it it's working don't change
00:19:02
it so when new technology shows up it I I understand the perspective of a regulator that's sitting on the other
00:19:08
side of that wall and it's saying man this is kind of working um okay then just to put you on the spot I mean I can
00:19:15
see you know when Joe Ben and Adam say hey point A to point B instead of hours in traffic you're there in 10 minutes if
00:19:21
there are really no pilot errors unlike in cars where there's still far too many
00:19:27
unnecessary deaths how do you measure the incremental justification for the investment let alone the reason to the
00:19:35
statistic that I just gave you is for large aircraft scheduled air carriers if you then look at the small airplane
00:19:40
Market or you look at helicopter markets it is it is orders of magnitude it's well it's Infinity more you know so but
00:19:46
it's it's it's way worse and so the question is how do you bring the level of safety of those large aircraft how do
00:19:53
you bring that same level of safety down into the get rid of recreational pilot you have to start you just have to start
00:19:58
I mean there is definitely this panel exists in China guess what there's two groups that are already certified there
00:20:04
they started that's how you do it you have to get moving you have to set an environment where we can all start
00:20:10
flying stuff when we can do it A to B and when you're using a large aircraft you're dividing the two pilots expense
00:20:17
amongst 300 seats or 100 seats and in this case you would have a pilot on a Joby flight with which really the
00:20:23
Pilot's not doing anything there's they're not flying it so it's they're there to make the passengers feel safer
00:20:31
is my understanding yeah the pilot you know there there are even with with what Brian's doing uh
00:20:39
with the incredible pioneering work on um on autonomy you you still have somebody on the ground who's uh making
00:20:47
sure that the weather is going to be safe and uh lots of other operational Logistics the benefit is you get to take
00:20:53
that person out of the aircraft and put them on the ground so you get to put another passenger in the aircraft um you
00:20:58
get a lot of operational flexibility uh because you're the the you don't necessarily have to have the pilot and
00:21:04
the plane at the same location at the same time uh a pilot can over time begin to operate multiple do the pilot do in
00:21:11
ajobi because my understanding is it's automated so they're sitting there just monitoring it they're making sure that
00:21:18
all of the operations are going to go safely the pilot AR flying there's a there's sticks right I
00:21:24
mean there is the option for the the the pilot to fly fly with the sticks as well
00:21:29
so in an emergency situation they would take over but it's autopilot essentially
00:21:33
there are a lot of a lot of computer systems that are helping the pilot fly and when one rotor goes down I mean one
00:21:41
of the great things about this is when you have a helicopter you know a rotor breaks you
00:21:47
die essentially we have layer on layer of redundancy we have six six propellers and each one's driven by separate motors
00:21:53
with each separate inverter with each a separate battery pack and so it's just you know the same thing with the flight
00:21:58
computers in the uh everything's massively redundant what would it take and that's what we did in big commercial
00:22:03
airlines which is why uh you get the incredible safety that that Brian was talking about yeah I mean we haven't had
00:22:09
a passenger death in the United States I think the last one was 2009 and the last
00:22:13
three passenger jets that went down the United States were all regional Jets which we all know that there's a
00:22:18
collection of problems there um so what would it take theoretically when you're doing your you know edge cases what are
00:22:26
the edge cases that are the most challenging in terms of safety well so uh you know with our
00:22:34
initial certification we are not certifying for flight in known icing for example so if you if you live in the
00:22:41
North Northeast uh you know there will be uh a few percent of the time where we won't be able to offer service you'll
00:22:48
just ground them during ice conditions you're not going to JFK when it's snowing well when it's snowing you may
00:22:54
be able to go but if it's there's certain conditions where where you get heav icing in terms of concerns and
00:23:01
things that could make these go down exactly so is there anything else though that could you know what's like the
00:23:07
what's like the the wind speed or gusting kind of condition Max and so on uh so we're actually very tolerant to
00:23:13
that it was actually it was interesting proba better than a wing than a winged aircraft I would imagine right right
00:23:18
yeah and and so there's these these folks at Nasa who are working on Wildfire prevention yeah and they came
00:23:24
they've they came and did a not the welfare prevention folks but NASA came and did did an acoustic survey where
00:23:30
they put out uh a whole array of microphones and we flew the aircraft in Hover and transition uh overlight Etc
00:23:37
and measured the acoustic signature and um showed that it was really low and could fit in the environment in terms of
00:23:43
uh but yesterday I was having a conversation with them on Wildfire prevention they're like these kinds of
00:23:47
aircraft are going to be game changers for for Wildfire because with helicopters they can't handle really
00:23:52
turbulent conditions when you've got lots of convection from the wildfire and and you have six Motors we have six
00:23:58
rotors and so there's this thing called Vortex ring state that uh affects vertical takeoff and Landing aircraft
00:24:04
and you aren't going to have all six rotors go into Vortex ring State at the same time and you can also one of the
00:24:10
cool things they found out with the Osprey is if you just tilt the rotors forward that you can get very very
00:24:14
quickly get out of Vortex ring state so basically these new new classes of aircraft and what you can do with
00:24:20
electric propulsion and I I don't think we've talked about that enough is is what a GameChanger electric propulsion
00:24:24
is can you talk about the the acoustic issue so give us some context for the decibel tolerance where what and what
00:24:33
was you know in a city and give us a comparison to stuff that exists today a big truck diesel truck helicopter like
00:24:39
and what do we need to be at for this to be ubiquitously accepted in cities and then what's the technology needed to get
00:24:45
the acoustic breakthroughs needed yeah so the background noise level in in cities is around 65 DB and so we set
00:24:52
that as our threshold for this is the level that we want uh want things you know want aircraft to be below during
00:24:59
takeoff and Landing you want you don't want to be Beyond background right we want to be below 45 DB in overflight um
00:25:06
and and we've achieved both of those goals uh you know you asked about other things you know I think a garbage truck
00:25:11
is uh 80 or 90 DB every they're the worst exactly the worst like every 10 DB is an order of magnitude more noise
00:25:20
energy so it's uh you know a jet engine is like 110 DB helicopters are between 80 and 100 DB uh the other thing about
00:25:29
helicopters that people find really annoying is it's this low frequency and that low frequency sound travels
00:25:35
long distance through the atmosphere and so what's the tech needed like it shakes
00:25:40
buildings and really what was yeah what's the tech needed to bring the acoustic like how hard is well I mean we
00:25:46
you know when I when I started joy in 2009 uh so it's 15 uh 15 years ago uh this week so it's like I've been working
00:25:55
on this a long time I've been dreaming about it since I was a kid um and it's it's incredible to see the
00:26:03
industry that we've built and uh and again yesterday to see like thousands of people gather just to focus on all of
00:26:10
the issues of bringing this to their cities around the world so that that's really exciting um
00:26:16
and the the you know the roll out and and the impact that this is going to have on cities is just really really
00:26:22
exciting so let me ask you guys you're eff just you're spinning the propellers slower that's what you're doing that's
00:26:27
the electric engine do that just create lower noise that that gets you like 90% of the benefit and then from there you
00:26:33
work to all the little efficiencies to get that stuff out so let me ask you guys about like the the convenience of
00:26:38
owning a car and like America kind of popularized this idea that everyone should own a car and then we all got a
00:26:44
car the benefit of a car is it's point to point I can go from any point a to any point B um how do you guys think
00:26:50
about the challenge of it's such a pain in the ass to go to a port just like it's a pain in the ass to go to a bus
00:26:56
station take a bus or you know Subway go to a spot in New York it works where things are dense enough but like in most
00:27:03
cities in the United States this is like it is preferable to take a car because I
00:27:08
can do point A to point B and my convenience which my time is always faster taking a car how how do you kind
00:27:14
of think about the calculus of the benefit here when I have to go to a port to be able to take the vehicle to the to
00:27:19
the next Port I I think you know your spot on I think of where we are today is very similar to where uh the automotive
00:27:25
industry was was in the 1890s where it was before we had the ability to mass produce cars we we were building tens
00:27:32
and then hundreds of cars and uh that didn't give the scale and so what we were using cars for was taxis we are in
00:27:40
a similar mode today where we are going to use these aircraft as taxis uh we still need to save people time and so
00:27:47
there's only going to be select routes where this is a game changer because of the multimodal nature uh where you need
00:27:52
to uh and you may not have a takeoff and Landing location exactly where you want
00:27:57
to leave from and go to but over time if we can get the acoustic signature down if we can make these aircraft even
00:28:04
quieter than they are today rather than needing to go to a a dedicated ver port to do this the dream is to eventually be
00:28:11
able to land them at your house Adam let's talk about um propulsion for a second energy density cost those
00:28:18
trade-offs speed these are all variables that kind of just work opposing each other um what were some design decisions
00:28:25
you guys made and um did you have to remake some of those did you change your mind at some point and just walk us
00:28:32
through that process the biggest challenge I think of building these aircraft is just the time it takes to do
00:28:39
it it is very expensive and it does not fit any typical model meaning the Venture guys don't like it and so
00:28:47
they're like sorry you want a billion dollars UPF front to build this like that's terrible you rejected me you
00:28:51
rejected me I don't think I met with you uh like everybody rejected probably all
00:28:56
of us up here so it's not a typical you know what I mean like Mom that's the reality so there was this crazy period
00:29:04
of time in 2021 with the capital markets opened up it was a dream scenario raise
00:29:09
a lot of money from the public markets that was nuts so that allowed this to happen and then from there it for for me
00:29:14
what we did was we said okay what is the business case meaning we thought when we
00:29:19
looked at like what are these we call them hero routes where there's a lot of people doing these trips like Manhattan
00:29:24
to JFK it's like 30 million people go from Manhattan to one of the three big airports in New York okay so all we have
00:29:31
to do no brainer that's a no-brainer yeah all we have to do is have a couple around the city which already exist
00:29:36
there's downtown Wall Street Hort wests side and just put them into the three airports and that'll be an amazing thing
00:29:42
to start with okay so short routes 20 to 50 mile routes now let's design an aircraft around that the fastest thing
00:29:49
we can do to get to Market so we don't die before the investors decide nah we're kind of like done with this one
00:29:54
now on to the next thing oh AI here let's everybody go all in on AI and so I'm just moving as fast as we can so
00:30:02
that was the biggest trade-off so it was always what is the minimum thing we need
00:30:06
to do to get that done so you need to look at speed range and payload payload is definitely the hardest because
00:30:12
batteries are heavy and there's just physics you're always fighting and then speed the difference between these
00:30:17
planes want to fly around 120 mph you go faster it's just more drag it just kills
00:30:23
your battery faster so you don't the difference between 120 150 on a 10 Mile flight doesn't really matter it's more
00:30:30
of how do you go at least that 20 to 50 mile route and go at least you know call
00:30:36
it 120 m per hour and do that as fast as possible what kind of batteries what kind of batteries did you guys choose
00:30:41
what lium ion cells commercial offthe shelf stuff uh Molly cell makes you can find the cells today there's millions of
00:30:47
them that are made and power tools and supercars and pretty conventional what's the range with the range of the aircraft
00:30:55
we're designing to go up to 100 miles but the the real design is around back to Rapid backtack 20 to 50 MP what do
00:31:02
you guys all need in terms of Battery Technology improvement from where we sit today or do you not and what's on the
00:31:08
horizon in terms of Battery Technology improvements what does that unlock in terms of range yeah so the batteries
00:31:12
that we're certifying our aircraft with or have a specific energy of about 300 wat hours per kilogram to put that in
00:31:18
context when I started the company in in 2009 we had cells that had sufficient specific power uh to do a vertical
00:31:27
takeoff but also so uh we're at about 170 W hours of kilogram so we've almost doubled the specific energy in the cells
00:31:34
over the last 15 years um that we have cells in our lab and then there's a third dimension which really matters is
00:31:41
This Is The Life and uh so we have the the cells we're uh taking the certification are give us a uh 10,25 M
00:31:52
flights so our our kind of sweet spot is is also in that uh in those shorter range flights and we want to be able to
00:31:59
do a lot of flights between uh between Replacements both for the environmental impact of it but also from the economics
00:32:07
of replacing those battery packs and when the the plane takes off that's a lot of um energy usage the the wings
00:32:15
tilt forward and now you're flying more like these ospre is as a plane the energy goes way down the consumption and
00:32:22
then on Landing you got to be very careful and use a lot more energy is that correct yeah and there's there's uh
00:32:28
different trade-offs you can make basically the more propulsors you have uh the smaller each propulsor is and the
00:32:33
and the heavier you're disc loading and the higher the amount of power you're using in Hover the the harder you're
00:32:40
pulling on the batteries um the uh but then more propulsors also gives you more redundancy so there's this uh there's a
00:32:49
trade there breast tax when do you each think we're going to pick um a quarter in a year so you know fourth quarter
00:32:57
2025 second quarter 2026 you all have to answer it uh you agreed backstage um and
00:33:04
Americans will be able to give money to get in one of these not a test flight you know in a major city in America um
00:33:14
to to when we all be able to use it uh not just yours yeah these guys should answer for themselves but I think
00:33:21
they'll get it done in uh in 2026 and you should yell at it's different ah man I don't um first quarter first quarter
00:33:30
26 I want to give him some heat we'll be we'll be a couple years after that but that's an incredible thing I mean
00:33:35
we're less you know a year plus away that's yeah that's crazy now you should um tell tell me how you feel about my
00:33:41
expectations yeah I I think pretty clearly there's a route to do this internationally next
00:33:48
year and so I think we'll launch with passengers next year um he said in the US I know I'll start there I'll start
00:33:55
there in in in 2025 job is to make sure we have a safe I think probably fourth quarter I think we have a my job is to
00:34:02
create a safe aircraft if Pete Budaj called and said hey there's a way to do this in the US I'm going to help cut
00:34:08
through all the red tape and we're going to help you get it done like my phone's
00:34:11
on I'm ready call me I we'll find a way to do it Pete why didn't we invite Pete he seems Dynamic so he was actually yeah
00:34:18
we uh we nearly had him yeah very close so I I think we're on a on a Time timeline which we publicly announced to
00:34:30
uh to begin commercial Service uh in the UAE next year um you think Q4 2025 as well I I think that's it's likely back
00:34:40
end I think it's at the back end of next year let me let me we will begin non uh you know begin
00:34:49
operations before that but uh we will not being to buy a buy a ticket have you figured out the flight profile that
00:34:55
you're going to start with like it's airport to X or something like that or we have we have uh four ver ports that
00:35:00
are um uh that we're planning to build in in Dubai and uh the RTA which is I would like one from the airport to the
00:35:10
wind which opens in 2027 yeah from Dubai to the new win it's a little far cuz it's in rock so it's a little far away
00:35:17
there's a win in Dubai that's opening opening a win that's we got to go we got to
00:35:22
go oh kidding aside I want to talk to you guys we talked yesterday with about this you know he said it's taken longer
00:35:30
to get approval to launch Starship than it did to take launch so this sort of push on regulatory we're hearing over
00:35:35
and over again you work with the FAA closely um can you just describe the path to bring them along get the
00:35:43
certifications that you need um and how much of a push or a pull that is in each
00:35:48
of your businesses yeah I mean I guess I'll just start you know obviously um from the autonomy standpoint
00:35:53
specifically you know we're really we're trying to push the frontier and so whenever whenever you're engaging with a
00:35:58
regulator no matter if it's Aviation or if it's biotech or some other thing if you're really really on the frontier it
00:36:04
means that that the regulator doesn't necessarily understand the technology any better than you do and so part of it
00:36:11
needs to be kind of a journey where you're going together to really learn how to make it safe at some point um you
00:36:18
need to be regulated you know there there needs to be a process of you putting forth um you know the engaging
00:36:23
in what what are the requirements you putting forth here's how we're going to meet those requirements and then as a
00:36:27
process I think that you know honestly from my standpoint that actually works okay um I just wish that it was a little
00:36:36
more responsive or engaging on some of the like deep technical subjects that we have to advance do they have the people
00:36:42
inside the that's part of the challenge so part of the challenge is that is that
00:36:46
in aviation partially because of what Peter teal said yesterday you know there's sort of a generation of you know
00:36:51
if you went into Aviation when I went into Aviation the demographics were completely upside down people you know
00:36:57
people were retiring new people weren't coming into the industry and so all many
00:37:01
of the experts in the fa that that have regulated some of these systems that have created really safe airplanes have
00:37:07
retired um there's a lot of new people coming into the industry which is great but um don't necessarily have the
00:37:13
expertise of having built some of the systems that we're now building and so there's some way that we almost need to
00:37:18
get people to come through the industry and then I think this is a really important point and it's countered to
00:37:24
what RFK Jr has been saying over and over again and this is why I I push back on him I'm sorry this is off topic there
00:37:31
there is a very important reason to have people from industry become part of the
00:37:37
regulatory framework for regulating the industry because if they don't they don't know how and they're going to have
00:37:43
a a complete aversion to embracing technological innovation that's why I think it's important that there is a
00:37:48
rotation of people that are you know consequentially not economically motivated in some way but that
00:37:55
understand the technology and can motivated but in that let me ask you guys in markets where there is a
00:38:00
regulatory framework that allows for Accelerated output of innovation let's take China for an example um there's a
00:38:06
good ab test maybe underway right now what companies are doing eval technology in China how good are they and then
00:38:13
given the way that the Chinese government can kind of step in and accelerate outcomes are we going to see
00:38:18
and are we seeing uball and Technology you know kind of coming to Market fast and in a kind of accelerated way in
00:38:24
China like we're seeing with nuclear and other tools that the government is a priority in a mandate yeah I mean you
00:38:29
have you have ehang and autoflight and they uhin and you know a bunch of them are making great progress there's a lot
00:38:35
of enthusiasm in China the regulatory uh pathway there is uh uh more forward leaning I I think as as Adam pointed out
00:38:44
and uh I think you're going to see more more rapid iter iteration I think the good news here in the US is that the fa
00:38:51
is uh in the process of releasing something called Mosaic which for aircraft that are smaller than ours uh
00:38:58
aircraft with with like two passengers in them more of a personal ownership type of thing that's going to allow much
00:39:03
more uh rapid development and a lighter a lighter touch from the fa just to put this in context the fa has done I think
00:39:11
an incredible job and they've really been leaning in when I went and first talked to them in 2009 they they thought
00:39:17
this was like absolutely crazy like they just did not think we were going to be able to build an electric air aircraft
00:39:23
let alone one that could take off and land vertically and which was quiet and all these all these different dimensions
00:39:29
we then you know began working with them regularly in 2015 uh began formal certification 2018 had uh stage 4 G1 and
00:39:37
in 2020 G2 uh and and then G3 and now we're working on stage four so it you know with each uh you know we are
00:39:47
building momentum we are writing all the rules uh it's very heavy lifting uh and told me once he uh cuz has been kind
00:39:58
of the first through the through the pipeline there and he said I feel like a pipe cleaner for for how to certify
00:40:02
these things and uh I guess I there's one thing I would just throw into the regulatory like context just just
00:40:07
because I I think you're bringing up a good point is it's not like these things were sitting on the shelf and and a
00:40:12
regulator was sitting somewhere saying you can't use that we have been on a journey that we just all talked about
00:40:18
getting these things ready so they're now just at the point where they're ready and the question is can we take
00:40:25
that first step in the US to really get it done and does the US do they approach
00:40:30
that from a culture of let's just try something if we get it wrong we can iterate it or it's is it more we must
00:40:38
get this right because there's all kinds of consequences political or other it's
00:40:42
so much more simple than that they want to do it the people at the top are actually genuinely very excited former
00:40:48
fa administrator Billy Nolan stepped down from his role joined Archer the new one Mike Whitaker came from an e talk
00:40:55
company they were very excited to do it the challeng is with probably most regulatory you know setups is not a lot
00:41:02
of incentive it's not like there's a downside to not doing it a lot of disincentive to do it meaning if
00:41:06
something goes bad it's there's only downside there and it's a slog and it's hard like this is hard this is not easy
00:41:12
to go through all this there's the incentives are not great and then on top of all of it there's no policy saying
00:41:19
hey America needs to be Innovative we need to go do this let's go and get it why is there no mandate like it would be
00:41:24
great if some leader said you guys need to get this done and we need to have these things flying safely
00:41:31
in the next 36 months like how does that happen in our current system I can understand Happ Trump literally put out
00:41:38
a video on it he put out a video agenda number whatever 39 or something like that where he talked about building
00:41:43
future cities I'm guessing he went to Dubai and then I'm sorry but is that something Adam that we could change
00:41:49
through an executive order I think it's culture you have to change meaning like we will do this and break down all the
00:41:55
barriers to get it done because it's it's not that hard like you can like we've all laid out the rules to certify
00:42:01
like why can't you let us just go do the tests and then if we do the tests you check them off we're
00:42:05
good that if you're a bureaucrat if you're working in one of these organizations if it goes poorly you're
00:42:12
in big trouble if it goes well are you well the SEC had you know this mandate it's very similar to you know allow more
00:42:20
accredited investors sophisticated investors allow people you know to to take tests and to just allow more access
00:42:26
to private companies and invest which would be good for a company and they and they have slow walked it so I think
00:42:32
that's part of the problem is just to build on what ad okay let's just say the SEC doesn't do anything it or they do it
00:42:38
and they make a mistake nobody at the SEC will get fired just like I I don't think the culture is that if you know
00:42:44
something if a commercial airline has an issue or for example in the 73 Max 737 Max issue did more people at Boeing get
00:42:51
fired did more people at the FAA get fired or did nobody get fired nobody Aviation Aviation is different on the
00:42:57
like in the comparison with the SEC as an example like Aviation is different like actually Aerospace is different and
00:43:02
and and I would just call out one thing that I saw on the stage yesterday which which really hit me if you saw elon's
00:43:07
face when he talked about the safety of the astronaut like you saw his face he was almost crying yes he was almost
00:43:13
crying and that's what Aerospace is all about and so I there is a um the the reason that the industry has been able
00:43:21
to get to that unbelievable statistic that I just talked about is that it's gone through all accidents it's gone
00:43:28
through terrible things that have happened and have turned into the rules that we are now all being regulated
00:43:33
towards what's happening now is that we're showing up with new technology so I'll give you an example like
00:43:38
regulations they currently say the pilot shall do X and it says that you know 50
00:43:43
times Well we don't have a pilot and so when we're showing up we have to kind of
00:43:46
rewrite what that is I understand why it says the pilot shall do X it says that because there were accidents in the past
00:43:52
that have now been regulated out of existence but you're also looking at it from the the negative point of view how
00:43:57
many lives could be saved if we got this stuff into pick a country India or Africa we could bring clean water and
00:44:03
medicine and supplies to people disaster relief it doesn't cost $10,000 an hour to fly a Blackhawk anymore into some
00:44:10
disaster relief situ situation costs $500 an hour and we can send 50 immediately and they're always available
00:44:16
the uptime is super huge and so I actually think you could save a lot of lives too if you what about saving lives
00:44:22
here in the US we we lose 40,000 people every year on the roads which is insane uh and we fly almost as many miles as we
00:44:29
drive so like driving is more than 10,000 times more dangerous per passenger mile than flying is so we can
00:44:37
actually by moving people into the air for their daily Transportation make the you know save thousands and tens of
00:44:44
thousands of lives but we need to get the technology out there we need to start learning I hope uh Peter teal had
00:44:50
it wrong and we are going to get flying cars in the next couple of years and I want to thank you all for being here
00:44:54
please join me in thaning our than