This Company Is a Mission to 'Transform Aviation,' CEO Says | At Barron's

There are so many people for so many years who told me, "You can't do that. That's crazy. My mother used to throw me out of Thanksgiving dinner and be like, "Stop talking about that goddamn airplane thing.

With Beta, Kyle Clark is ensuring the next frontier for electric vehicles isn't the streets, it's the skies. Beta Technologies isn't in the business of making EVs for celebs to fly around. They're making aircraft to do the less flashy but plentiful work of logistics and medical transports for now.

Beta's aircraft are zero emission when flying, and the company is building them from a plant often cited as the largest net zero manufacturing facility east of the Mississippi River. The company passed 130,000 nautical miles flown and is expanding its network of charging stations. It has 123 so far.

I spoke to Clark about his journey from flight obsessed kid to pro hockey player to founder and CEO. We also talked about range anxiety beta stock and where the company is headed.

All right. So tell us about your company. It is flying cars, electric helicopters. What is it? How does it work?

Yeah. So we we definitely don't say it's flying cars. We're Yeah.

No, I know. It's it's an interesting common misconception in the industry that that the the right place to start is with flying in what they call urban air mobility in and out of cities with electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. And it's a great future vision, but our strategy of beta is significantly different.

It's a step-wise approach into the market that starts with medical transports, then cargo and logistics, then military, and then passenger. And that's how we've entered. So we, you know, we our first customer was United Therapeutics who does artificial organs.