eVTOL developer Archer Aviation has signed on as the official air taxi partner of the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. As a partner to the event and Team USA, Archer’s Midnight eVTOL aircraft will transport VIPs, fans, and athletes around event venues in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Archer Aviation ($ACHR) appears poised to be the first eVTOL developer to bring commercial air taxi rides to the skies above the US. Leading up to today’s news, Archer had announced partnerships to establish zero-emission air taxi networks in several global regions, including Japan and the UAE, and flights in its native US.
For example, Archer unveiled an initial route map for air taxi operations in New York City last month alongside details of an ongoing partnership with United Airlines. The pending air taxi network includes vertiports at JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark Airports around NYC and a presence at regional airports and three helipads in the city itself.
The NYC air taxi network was preceded by plans for an eVTOL air mobility network coming to Los Angeles, announced in August 2024. At the time, the company said it is targeting initial eVTOL operations in the Los Angeles metropolitan area by 2026, long before the influx of global visitors for the 2028 Olympic Games.
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Today, Archer announced that it has become the official air taxi provider for visitors to the Los Angeles Olympic Games.
Source: Archer Aviation
Archer to take air taxis to the skies above the 2028 Olympic Games
According to an update from Archer Aviation, it has signed a partnership to be the exclusive air taxi provider for the LA28 Olympic Games. In this partnership, Archer Aviation will integrate its flagship Midnight eVTOL aircraft into transport operations and support Team USA
The Archer eVTOL is expected to transport Olympic VIPs, fans, and company stakeholders around the 2028 games’ locations, utilizing vertiport hubs at key venues. The eVTOL developer said its sustainable aerial technology will also support emergency services and security. Per Archer founder and CEO Adam Goldstein:
We want to transform the way people get around Los Angeles and leave a legacy that shapes the future of transportation in America. There’s no better time to do that than during the LA28 Games. I can’t wait to see Midnight flying passengers over Los Angeles, emblazoned with the Team USA logo and the Olympic Rings and Paralympic Agitos.
eVTOL vertiports are planned for SoFi stadium in Inglewood and the Memorial Coliseum on the USC campus. Other locations include visitor hubs at LAX Airport, Hollywood, Orange County, and Santa Monica. The 2028 Olympic Games are expected to welcome over 15 million visitors from around the world, some of whom will have an opportunity to experience some of the first-ever air taxi rides in the US.
Archer’s Midnight eVTOL can transport up to four passengers at a time and is significantly quieter than other traditional forms of aerial transportation, such as helicopters. The Midnight aircraft will be assembled at Archer’s manufacturing facilities in San Jose, California, and its newly erected facility in Covington, Georgia.
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If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
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To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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The OPEC logo is displayed on a mobile phone screen in front of a computer screen displaying OPEC icons in Ankara, Turkey, on June 25, 2024.
Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images
Eight oil-producing nations of the OPEC+ alliance agreed on Saturday to increase their collective crude production by 548,000 barrels per day, as they continue to unwind a set of voluntary supply cuts.
This subset of the alliance — comprising heavyweight producers Russia and Saudi Arabia, alongside Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates — met digitally earlier in the day. They had been expected to increase their output by a smaller 411,000 barrels per day.
In a statement, the OPEC Secretariat attributed the countries’ decision to raise August daily output by 548,000 barrels to “a steady global economic outlook and current healthy market fundamentals, as reflected in the low oil inventories.”
The eight producers have been implementing two sets of voluntary production cuts outside of the broader OPEC+ coalition’s formal policy.
One, totaling 1.66 million barrels per day, stays in effect until the end of next year.
Under the second strategy, the countries reduced their production by an additional 2.2 million barrels per day until the end of the first quarter.
They initially set out to boost their production by 137,000 barrels per day every month until September 2026, but only sustained that pace in April. The group then tripled the hike to 411,000 barrels per day in each of May, June, and July — and is further accelerating the pace of their increases in August.
Oil prices were briefly boosted in recent weeks by the seasonal summer spike in demand and the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, which threatened both Tehran’s supplies and raised concerns over potential disruptions of supplies transported through the key Strait of Hormuz.
At the end of the Friday session, oil futures settled at $68.30 per barrel for the September-expiration Ice Brent contract and at $66.50 per barrel for front month-August Nymex U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude.
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
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