At Paris Air Show, eVTOL Industry Preps for Takeoff

It’s a bird … it’s a plane … it’s an … electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, or eVTOL (neither of which exactly rolls off the tongue, if you ask us).

As Airbus lands major sales and Boeing tries to regain its credibility at this year’s Paris Air Show, the upstart not-quite-a-plane, not-quite-a-helicopter, not-quite-cleared-for-liftoff eVTOL industry is climbing closer and closer to achieving its sky-high ambitions. For key US players Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation, the show comes at a critical moment.

Icarus Moment

Both Archer and Joby went public in 2020 during the SPAC craze. Like a lot of SPAC companies, their appeal to investors was largely speculative — and, five years later, remains somewhat speculative (neither has completed a commercial flight yet). But promises of a Jetsons-esque future of battery-powered flying taxis are starting to look a little more real, especially after a slew of developments in just the past couple of weeks.

At the end of May, Joby announced it received $250 million from Toyota, the second tranche of a $500 million investment from the major automaker announced in October (which itself followed a previous $394 million investment from Toyota). Then, last week, came the big news: As part of a broader initiative to promote domestic drone production, the White House issued an executive order to launch a pilot program for the nascent industry. 

The announcement brought renewed interest to the pair of eVTOL firms, which showed both companies may have climbed a little too close to the sun:

• Shares of Joby had spiked more than 30% in the days immediately following the announcement of the Toyota cash infusion. That led analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald to quell some of the excitement, downgrading the stock from overweight to neutral while highlighting the company’s high cash-burn rate and lack of near-term upside.
• Archer, meanwhile, seized the opportunity presented by the White House’s encouraging executive orders to sell $850 million of stock on Friday, which dragged its share price down 15%. It did recover nearly 4% on Monday, however.

Cleared for Takeoff: But what about the question that may matter the most: When will these birds finally fly? It’s tough to say. Both companies have scored deals to launch air taxi services in the United Arab Emirates, with Archer saying industry standards in the country should be finalized by next month and Joby saying service could start as soon as early next year. Both companies have also struck deals with major US airlines — Archer with United and Joby with Delta — to eventually ferry passengers to and from major US airports. Archer has also struck a deal to become the official air taxi partner of the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, which shows the lengths to which Angelenos will go to avoid their infamous traffic jams.