Next generation electric aircraft developer Archer has announced its plans to launch air taxi services in India through a partnership with Delhi-based travel and hospitality group InterGlobe Enterprises.
Archer revealed its signing of a memorandum of understanding with InterGlobe this morning, saying the airline, hotel, and travel planning group will facilitate its efforts to introduce air taxi operations in India. With its huge population, dense cities, and notoriously snarled ground traffic, the nation represents a potentially huge and lucrative market for Archer to propose fast and sustainable aerial options.
The deal with InterGlobe also provides Archer a quasi-obligatory local ally to satisfy protectionist economic statues restricting the ability of foreign companies to do business in India on their own, and permits the California startup to plan air taxi operation for coming years.
Under the nation’s AatmaNirbhar Bharat – or Make in India –policies, virtually all goods produced and services offered in the country by foreign firms require domestic partners to partake in activities. Those rules previously led Canadian drone maker Draganfly and Archer air taxi rival Eve Mobility to similarly sign on local allies as a means of entering the market.
According to an Archer communiqué, its alliance with InterGlobe will seek to strike additional relationships with businesses in India to fill a variety of roles. Recruited groups will be selected to operate air taxis, build vertiport infrastructure, and train pilots and other personnel needed for aerial services.
The accord with InterGlobe also stipulates – without providing additional details – the financing and purchase of up to 200 of Archer’s Midnight air taxis for operation in India.
As an example of the time savings the electric takeoff and landing (eVTOL) planes seek to offer commuters in India over current ground travel, Archer says the 27-kilometer trip between Delhi’s Connaught Place to Gurugram will be cut from 60 to 90 minutes by car to around seven minutes.
“I founded Archer with the vision to help decongest the world’s largest cities,” said Archer CEO Adam Goldstein of the logic behind the air taxi agreement. “India is one of, if not the largest opportunity for eVTOL aircraft utilization in the world, as it is home to the world’s largest population of over 1.4 billion people and its largest cities face some of the greatest congestion challenges in the world. Archer’s all-electric Midnight aircraft is designed to provide a revolutionary transportation solution that can help address these congestion issues.”
In addition to urban air taxi services, Archer and InterGlobe also plan to explore to cargo, logistics, medical, and emergency response applications for the aircraft.
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