From flying cars to self-driving cars: CEOs weigh in

Archer Aviation Founder and CEO Adam Goldstein joins Opening Bid Unfiltered with Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi to chat about the future of flying cars. Goldstein explains why he is so passionate about EVTOLs (Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing) and key milestones for Archer Aviation this year.

Then, Sozzi chats with DVx Ventures CEO and former Tesla executive Jon McNeill about the future of autonomous driving and what he learned from Elon Musk during his time at Tesla.

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, uh, in, in a long time. So it's good to have you here on the, on the podcast. Um, I've been following the Archer journey for, for a while. Uh, I've been seeing what you guys are building in the EV tall space. For those not familiar with Archer, what do you, what's the problem you're trying to solve in terms of aviation?

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 4 passengers in and around urban environments. So instead of driving on the ground 90 minutes to go, you know, 1520, 30 miles, you could fly, and you can get there in 5 to 10 minutes. And so we're really in the, in the business of saving people time.Giving people back time and really trying to help them, uh, you know, enjoy their lives a bit better. On the defense side, there's a whole new set of applications that we're building. Um, once aircraft could go electric, there's an ability to really build the new applications that solve a lot of the modern day problems. So you can think about, uh, this category they call autonomous and attributable, which means unmanned low-cost solutions that can really confront a lot of the, uh, the modern day challenges that we have.

Take us through some of the, uh, I mean, images of what you do, like that, that aircraft, that EV tall, um, 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 design, 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 combustion engine. They're big, and you have one big rotor that ties into that, uh, into that engine. But now with electric engines, you can scale them down. So you can have 12, 100, 1000, and so you have this new design space to go build something, and that as a, you know, an aviation, uh, you know, sort of nerd.Like an unbelievable, you know, opportunity, kind of a, you know, in, in our lifetime, it's 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's tons of decisions to make. A lot of them are just trade-offs. There's technology bets, there's, you know, things that you want to do to design for the consumer experience. There's things that you can do to design for a certification, you know, process. So there's a lot of trade-offs you have to think about. Once you have a design in place.Then you have to really start thinking about, OK, how do we go and actually, um, build, test, and certify this vehicle. So we have to actually create, uh, there had to be a new category that was created for us. So, it's the first new category that the FAA created in 60 years. So, it's a totally new concept. It's not a helicopter, it's not an airplane, it's this new concept that they call, um, powered lift, or, you know, what people call, um, you know, advanced air mobility. And so there's anOpportunity now to, you know, really take something, build a totally new category of aircraft, but then we have to decide and sort of argue the rules. What does safety mean? And so we have to think about the rules that get written, the laws that ultimately get approved, the tests that we have to do to really show that those rules were done and met and the safety standards were met. So there's a whole another category of certification you have to do. And then finally, on the other side, you have to do manufacturing, which is you have to go build a lot ofThings. And so how do we go build and scale up a whole new industry that didn't really exist before? It's new supply chains, that's new production systems. There's a whole new category in the manufacturing side that has to get delivered to. So those are literally the three big categories that I spend my time on. That's where all the people, you know, are really, are really, uh, you know, spending their time on, but it's a heck of an undertaking.

I want to get into those things,but before I do, where did you catch that, uh, aviation nerd bug? Like, is it early on from when you were a kid?

Oh yeah, I've always loved things that fly. Um, it's uh, it's definitely a sort of rooted in in who I am, but really building complex things, building complex machines is what I, I really enjoy. And so this is a an obviously a, a very, very difficult problem.And it goes back to like my startup roots, and so, I started working, um, building kind of software-based startups, and um I really wanted to always build things that I could touch and hold, and, and kind of physically see. And so I loved the hardware side of things. Hardware didn't become fashionable, though, really, until kind of post Tesla being successful, and SpaceX being successful. It was near impossible to raise money for hardware. And so hardware, you know, kind of became like the new software became very investable, um, you know, only really like 10 years ago.And so it's very difficult to do that before. So even if you loved it, it was very hard to do because no one would put any money into it. It was always viewed as it takes too long, the cycles are bad. I've always heard, um, you know, the sort of the, the rules that some of the biggest venture funds were never hardware. And so that was kind of like the, you know, the top rules, and I think Tesla helped changed all that.

What you're testing now, how does this aircraft look different than the early days when you started to build them?

A lot of it has to do with, um, how do you want to like lay the aircraft out and where do you want to think about putting the engines and propellers. So, when you're building this new type of vertical lift aircraft, there's a couple of things you have to think about. First, you start with a maximum takeoff weight and a wingspan. So you want to fit inside existing infrastructure.And so there's a lot of trade-offs there of how big, how small do you want it to be. The size of the aircraft will generally lead to ultimately, the amount of payload you can carry. So if you build a really small thing, you can't carry that much stuff. You need a bigger thing with a bigger wing that's more efficient to carry more stuff. But that has to fit inside the existing helicopter infrastructure, unless you want to build a whole new set of infrastructure, which we don't want to do from the very beginning. Over time that can happen.The next thing you have to do is you have to say, OK, well, we need to spin, you know, something, a proper rotor fast enough to generate lift to bring these aircraft off the ground.And so when you do that, then you have to really figure out, OK, are we gonna have one propeller, 10, 100, 1000, and whatever how many you have and decide what you have, where are you gonna put them on the aircraft? And so you can laterally spread them across the wing, you can put them more in line with the fuselage, you can put them in a circle. There's lots of different ways that you can do it. So, a lot of the early concepts are really trying to understand those.Trades, how many propellers, where do you put them? Why? What are the advantages, disadvantages of doing this? And so we went through a bit of a cycle to do that. Some of the earliest engineers that work at Archer have also been doing this for a very, very long time. So there's a lot of lessons that have been learned in the industry, and that have been like generic things of what not to do. And that's really helped shape a lot of what the designs look like today.

Will.Well, you still need the pilot.

So, today you need a pilot because there's not laws, certification, or infrastructure to really allow for autonomous civil travel. Of course, you can see autonomous um travel today without people in them. There's lots of drones that do this. But if you want to start putting people in them, there's very, um, you know, the strict set of rules that need to get established that help really identify safety, um, to get that done, and then there's infrastructure that needs to get done. So, for example,Just because technologically you can do it, doesn't mean that infrastructure can handle it. So how would this aircraft communicate with air traffic control is a good example. How is that going to work? So even if you technically could do it, there's no real system in today that's been decided on what to do.So, do you need a pilot to do it? You don't need a pilot to do it technically, but from all the other things you need infrastructure, certification, um, the, the other side of it is that you definitely need it today. Over time, that wil