Last October, when a who’s who of Vermont politicos and businesspeople gathered to celebrate the opening of Beta Technologies‘ electric aircraft factory in South Burlington, the production floor was still empty.
A year later, the 188,000-square-foot space — as open and tall as an indoor arena — has come to life. Technicians tinker beneath an unpainted fuselage. Fifty-foot wings of Alia, the company’s five-seat electric plane, hang from assembly mounts. Thousands of battery cells enter one end of a production line in cardboard boxes and exit the other as suitcase-size packs that can power a plane. The company’s first product to go to market, tidy charging stations that can refuel the Alia in about an hour, sit in various stages of assembly.
Here, at the far end of the Burlington International Airport along Williston Road, is the only place in the U.S. where you’ll find a commercial-grade factory configured to produce what is the most anticipated advancement in aviation this century: an electric plane that can take off and land vertically, like a helicopter, untethered from airstrips.
What you won’t see — yet — are finished planes at the end of the assembly line waiting to be shipped to customers.
Beta remains locked in a high-stakes race alongside companies in Silicon Valley, China, Germany and elsewhere to bring this new form of aviation technology to market. That race has entered a grueling middle stage, as companies seek to turn their prototypes into sellable products. To do that, and to operate in the U.S., each must win the approval of the Federal Aviation Administration — both for their plane designs and for their manufacturing processes.
For now, the production floor in South Burlington functions as a kind of proving ground where Beta technicians are working to create and refine each step of manufacturing and assembly. It’s a crucial transition for a company that has raked in nearly $1 billion in investment on the basis of its prototypes alone.
“A lot of our work has been the not-as-sexy stuff — just grinding out, How do you become an aerospace manufacturing company? That’s very different from being a design and R&D company,” chief information officer Blain Newton said.
Embracing the grind has been Beta’s secret sauce. Unlike many of its competitors, the company has pitched itself as pursuing a more realistic, if somewhat less glamorous, path to an electric aviation revolution. Rather than striving to sell the first “Jetsons”-style urban air taxi, Beta thinks the planes will gain purchase initially by transporting cargo. Founder Kyle Clark talks up the company’s “Yankee pragmatism” as much as its futuristic goals.
Last year, Beta announced a shift in its market strategy. Rather than debut the vertical takeoff version of the Alia, the company will first seek FAA certification and commercial sales of a simpler version that takes off and lands like a conventional airplane.
The announcement was odd for an industry in which drumming up hype is the norm. Was there a problem with Beta’s coveted vertical design? The company says no: In April, Beta released a video in which one of its aircraft takes off vertically, flies forward like an airplane, then lands again in helicopter mode.
Newton said Beta is being practical. Certifying a new class of vertically powered aircraft is a complex task for the FAA, and the timeline for doing so is uncertain. Beta thinks it can chart a smoother path to regulatory approval by certifying its products in steps. First, its proprietary electric propulsion system; then, the conventional version of Alia; last, the vertical takeoff configuration. Doing so, Newton said, should help the FAA become comfortable with Beta’s technology by breaking the process into more digestible pieces.
The company hopes to certify the conventional takeoff plane by the end of 2025, though Beta leaders say the date is more of a target than a promise.
“We’re just working really close with the FAA right now, and ultimately our timeline is, at some level, theirs,” he said, adding that Beta aircraft will be deployed for some limited commercial operations — in other countries, at least — next year.
The FAA has been putting together the regulations that will govern new vertical takeoff aircraft. At the same time, Beta opened a government affairs office in Washington, D.C., near Capitol Hill and has spent more than $800,000 in recent years to lobby Congress on industry regulations, according to the money-in-politics database OpenSecrets. Clark testified before a U.S. House Transportation & Infrastructure subcommittee in 2023.
On Tuesday, the FAA released the last major batch of new rules, which Beta’s regulatory affairs lead, Kristen Costello, called “an important and encouraging step for the industry.”
Beta believes there is a small but profitable market for the conventional version of its electric plane that only flies short distances and must use airstrips. They are also cheap to operate. Newton points to Air New Zealand, which has already ordered the conventional version of Alia as part of an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in its fleet.
The airline announced this year that it plans to use Alia to transport mail packages between the North and South islands. It’s a demonstration project, the company said in its announcement: Air New Zealand has “a firm order for one aircraft with options for an additional two aircraft, and rights for a further 20 aircraft.”
In the U.S., Beta has been eyeing small regional airports as untapped potential for electric air transport. The company has installed more than 30 charging stations, some of which have been subsidized by state and federal governments, at airfields around the country.
Using efficient electric aircraft at regional airports could open up new transportation networks in rural areas, Newton said. For instance, Vermonters could fly from Rutland to Hanscom Field airport outside of Boston on the weekends, or from Newport to Burlington for health care.
Industry analysts continue to view Beta as a leader in the so-called “advanced air mobility” space. SMG Consulting, a Phoenix-based firm that maintains a regularly updated ranking of these companies’ progress toward commercial sales, places Beta first among U.S. manufacturers and third in the world, behind companies in China and Germany.
A positive perception of Beta within the industry won’t put a plane in the sky. But it could help the company stay competitive at a time when the easy flow of investor cash to electric aircraft developers seems to have slowed, as the business news outlet Marketplace reported earlier this year.
Beta has raised about $1 billion so far — most of that by early 2022 — according to the privately held company. Asked whether Beta has the cash it needs to get its planes certified, spokesperson Jake Goldman said company leaders “feel really good” about its financial position.
Beta’s progress is already shaping the region’s economic future. What began as a novelty startup in 2017 has already grown into one of the state’s largest companies, with most of its more than 800 employees in Vermont. They work at Beta’s airport headquarters and production facilities or at a battery-testing site in St. Albans. At last year’s grand opening of the production facility, Gov. Phil Scott predicted that Beta would soon become as important to Vermont as IBM was in the second half of the 20th century.
Beta has been on a hiring spree as it tries to build up its manufacturing capabilities; more than 60 positions are currently posted on its website. Many of its engineers were recruited from other tech companies, but the manufacturing jobs tend to pull from a local labor pool that is limited in Vermont.
Beta leaders say hiring hasn’t been a hang-up so far, thanks to aggressive recruitment and on-the-job training.
More than 100 employees are working on the production side, according to Sean Donovan, Beta’s head of manufacturing. Donovan, who previously worked at Tesla and Airbus, headed Beta’s battery development before taking on the entire production process. Several years ago, he helped set up the company’s first battery production line in a series of cramped shipping containers next to Beta’s terminal-side headquarters.
The current battery line, which occupies one corner of the new building, is the third iteration in Beta’s short history, Donovan said. He expects the battery line will continue evolving. Some workers are refining the process, while others are planning for the next design, as battery technology continues to improve.
Next to each station on the production floor, a computer monitor displays detailed performance data about every aspect of the manufacturing process. The data will help Beta refine its quality control and production methods so that it can demonstrate precision and reliability to the FAA.
The work at the airport stands in contrast to Beta’s top American competitor, California-based Joby Aviation. That company claims it will fly commercial passengers with its vertical takeoff aircraft sometime in 2025, though it hasn’t said where those flights would take place. Its planned commercial-scale manufacturing facility in Dayton, Ohio, won’t open until sometime next year, the Dayton Daily News reported in August.
On a recent tour of Beta’s facility, Donovan pointed to the end of the aircraft production line, where some equipment was scattered in boxes. The company was tearing down a workstation that, until now, had served as a demonstration lab for the final stages of aircraft assembly.
They are taking it apart, Donovan said, “to make space to actually assemble the aircraft.”
BETA Technologies will exhibit at the Vermont Tech Jam on Saturday, October 26, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., at Hula in Burlington. Find details, and register to attend the free event, at techjamvt.com.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Beta Build-Out | The South Burlington company preps its production line as it races to take electric aviation to market”
This article appears in The Tech Issue 2024.
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