Archer Aviation (ACHR +2.12%) is in the business of making flying cars — or rather, flying shuttles — to help people avoid traffic jams in major cities and save a serious amount of time.

Picture a small electric aircraft lifting straight up from a rooftop and flying to your destination in 10 minutes or less. That’s Archer’s vision. It’s not as thrilling as a Disney theme park ride, but it could feel as satisfying as skipping a three-hour line in the Lightning Lane.

Speaking of Disney — or rather, magic — Archer’s vision has the makings of a great story, yet outside the imagination, very little of its business has taken off. Mostly pre-revenue, without FAA certification in hand, the only thing keeping Archer afloat is the patent for its Midnight aircraft — a four-seater (five with pilot) that will hopefully zip above cities en route to airports and major urban ports.

Well, we can hope that day will come. And if it does, this sub-$7 stock could undergo a radical transformation.

Image source: Archer Aviation.

Chasing certification

The first thing to know about Archer Aviation, other than its traffic-ending vision of flying cars, is the progress it’s making on the FAA certification timeline.

Earlier in May, Archer became the first eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) company to complete phase three of the FAA’s four-step certification process. That was good news for toe-tapping investors waiting for some progress on the regulatory front, and it allows Archer to physically test its aircraft under FAA oversight to prove its airworthiness.

Elsewhere, Archer is making significant progress toward bringing eVTOLs to a major city near you. Under the White House’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, Archer is working with partners in three of the biggest U.S. states (New York, Texas, and Florida) to initiate operations there in the “second half” of 2026. That seems ambitious — the second half of 2026 officially begins in five weeks — but with the White House’s urgent push for eVTOL commercialization, who knows: You might see a Midnight aircraft in a sky near you.

Icarus flying close to the sun?

A sub-$7 price may make Archer seem cheap, but in business terms, it’s not a bargain. At around $7 a share, Archer still has a market cap of about $5 billion, while first-quarter revenue was only $1.6 million, and its net loss was roughly $218 million.

Archer burns roughly $180 million a quarter, while having about $1.8 billion in liquidity. If Archer were to continue burning cash at this rate, three years would pass before it needed a fresh cash injection.

The problem is Archer’s annual cash burn. In 2024, it burned about $450 million; in 2025, it blew through $538 million; and over the last 12 months, it’s spent $615 million.

Where’s all that money going? On certification work and manufacturing, most likely. To date, Archer has finished only two aircraft, and its next three have been in production since last August. If it finishes those before its next earnings report in August, that will give it a fleet of five — a far cry from the 500 eVTOLs the company once promised it would have in 2026.

At this point, Archer needs a network of air taxis, the infrastructure to support it, a team of pilots and specialists to run the program, and marketing and advertising to build up a customer base. When you factor in these future expenses, that $1.8 billion in liquidity could evaporate fast — and Archer doesn’t have meaningful revenue to soak up the costs itself.

Will buying Archer under $7 make investors rich?

At this point, Archer is an eVTOL hopeful whose only major asset is a patent for Midnight. It has partners in manufacturing and technology — including Stellantis, which is itself undergoing a massive structural change in its business — and a potential customer in United Airlines. But I would hesitate to call Archer a strong buy right now for most investors, or even a modest one.

Archer, in a nutshell, is benefiting from a larger milieu driving the stock market today, an atmosphere of hope and speculation, of narratives and techno-optimism, that can see past the hard, concrete reality of today to a future of maybes and could-bes. Archer could be a major industrial stock in 10 or 20 years; it could be a traveler’s best friend or a major defense partner like Palantir; it could, in short, make early investors very rich.

But today, it is a $7 stock with clipped wings, no commercial revenue from its eVTOLs, and a vision with more unknowns than constants. Those who jump on board should size their positions carefully, as this one could be flying a little too close to the sun.