Flying Cars and Supersonic Jets: Silicon Valley’s New Arms Race

Amid heightened concerns about U.S. aviation infrastructure, a crop of startups are bullish that they will significantly disrupt the travel experience in the next few years.

“Every other industry has innovated. We've just added baggage fees.”

Archer Aviation CEO and founder Adam Goldstein was complaining to me in the middle of a swanky lounge at Casa Cipriani, with a view of the Downtown Manhattan Heliport just blocks away.

Goldstein is looking to launch eVTOLs, short for electric vertical takeoff and landing, in the U.S. within the next couple years, with the hopes of turning the company into the Uber of the skies and eventually replacing helicopters. The company recently announced that it is building an air taxi network in the New York area as part of a partnership with United Airlines, a major investor in the company.

He is also one of the many founders and executives of startups I spoke to who are looking to drastically alter the aviation landscape, one that is notorious for its lack of innovation. “We still are flying a tube and wing that was designed in the Cold War,” Goldstein told me.

It’s a longtime gripe for those in Silicon Valley. Peter Thiel, the high-profile venture capitalist and founder of PayPal, famously called out the industry in what became the slogan for his venture capital fund Founders Fund. “We wanted flying cars, but instead we got 140 characters,” Thiel wrote.

But now that might be changing.

Investors are pouring billions into eVTOLs and customers are placing orders. Supersonic jets, which promise to fly passengers from New York to London in just three hours, are also looking to make a comeback.

In January, Boom Supersonic experienced a major milestone when its civilian jet, the XB-1, broke the sound barrier during a test flight at the Mojave desert.

Blake Scholl, the CEO of Boom Supersonic, shared similar concerns as Goldstein.

“I think it's the natural progression that technology and air travel should get faster and better,” Scholl said. “And we lost our way. And it's a great tragedy. It's almost a murder mystery.”

But amid this burst of innovation, concerns about the National Airspace System, outdated equipment, and an acute air traffic controller shortage stand out as risks to continued progress. A plane crash near Washington, D.C. in January heightened those concerns.

“We have an air travel traffic system that's got more and more traffic in it, where we haven't kept up with technology, we haven't kept