Archer Aviation founder and CEO Adam Goldstein stepped up to the Opening Bid Unfiltered podcast mic with Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sozzi to chat about the future of flying. Goldstein shares why he is so passionate about EVTOLs and the next important milestones for Archer Aviation this year. He also discusses a desire to make aircraft for the US government.<br><br>Then, Sozzi chats with one of the more fascinating people in the VC industry Jon McNeill of DVx Ventures. McNeill is the former COO of Lyft, and also worked very closely with Tesla CEO Elon Musk as president in charge of revenue. What did McNeill learn from the billionaire Musk? How will the future of mobility shake out? And what AI upstarts have caught the attention of McNeill.<br>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 From Tesla playbook to autonomous GM vehicles: future of mobility

Power Players with Brian Sozzi

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** Opening Bid Unfiltered

## Transcript

Welcome to a new episode of Opening Bid Unfiltered. I'm Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sazi. So excited for my special guest for this episode, Archer Aviation CEO Adam Goldstein. Adam, good to see you. You and I have not talked in a long time, so it's good to have you here on the podcast. I've been following the Archer journey for a while. I've been seeing what you guys are building in the eVTOL space. For those not familiar with Archer, what's the problem you're trying to solve in terms of aviation?

We're really building a next generation aviation company, and it spans across civil and defense. On the civil side, we're building products that are designed to carry a pilot plus four passengers in and around urban environments. So instead of driving on the ground 90 minutes to go, you know, 15, 20, 30 miles, you could fly and you can get there in five to 10 minutes. And so we're really in the business of saving people time, giving people back time, and really trying to help them, you know, enjoy their lives a bit better.

On the defense side, there's a whole new set of applications that we're building. Once aircraft could go electric, there's an ability to really build new applications that solve a lot of the modern day problems. So you can think about this category they call autonomous and attributable, which means unmanned, low cost solutions that can really confront a lot of the modern day challenges that we have.

Take us through some images of what you do, like that, that aircraft, that EVTOL. These are not easy to make by any stretch of the imagination. Like, what are some of the challenges you're up against to ramping up a business like this and making these type of products?

There's a lot of different categories that you have to think about. And so the first one is really designed. So like aircraft design. So what are we going to build? So you have this really, you know, advancement of electric power systems. And so you can now build electric engines, you can now use fuel from lithium ion batteries, and you can create a totally new type of product.

And so historically, you would be using a piston or a combustion engine. And that is a, you know, a very, you know, big product that does not scale down very well. So they tend to be, you know, bigger products. So a helicopter, as an example, will use a piston or a combustion engine, they're big, and you have one big rotor that ties into that, into that engine. But now with electric engines, you can scale them down. So you can have one, two, 100, 1000. And so you have this new design space to go build something and that as a, you know, an aviation, you know, sort of nerd,

is like an unbelievable, you know, opportunity, kind of a, you know, in our lifetime, it's just a crazy opportunity to be able to go build something entirely new in a category. So there's a design side of things that you have to get right. And there...

From Tesla playbook to autonomous GM vehicles: future of mobility

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.

From Tesla playbook to autonomous GM vehicles: future of mobility

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.