- Pivotal, the flying car startup backed by Google cofounder Larry Page, delayed shipments until 2025.
- It announced in January that the first orders would ship in June this year.
- The company has struggled to get its new Helix vehicle production-ready in time, per a source.
Pivotal, the flying vehicle company backed by Google cofounder Larry Page, has quietly pushed back the delivery date of its first aircrafts to customers until 2025.
The company announced in January that it would ship its first orders to customers on June 10 of this year. That deadline has since come and gone without any word from the company. A few weeks ago, the estimated ship date on the company website's order page was changed to August-September 2024 and then updated again a few days ago to March-April 2025.
A spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
The company, previously named Opener and now based in Palo Alto, California, rebranded itself as Pivotal in October 2023. At the time, it also unveiled the Helix, an updated and rebranded version of its flagship eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft, the BlackFly.
The company was still in the early days of prototyping and safety testing the Helix at the time, making the promised June deadline seem unfeasible to some employees inside the company, according to a person familiar with the matter, whose identity Business Insider has confirmed and who asked not to be named because they were not permitted to speak with the media.
Page recently agreed to inject more funds into the company with the agreement that a specific number of Helix vehicles would be built by the end of the year, the person added.
The Helix starts at $190,000 and will be classified as an Ultralight aircraft, meaning customers won't need a pilot's license to fly it.
It's unclear how many Helix pre-orders Pivotal has taken. In February, the company announced it had delivered four BlackFly models to the US Air Force to be evaluated for military use. In May, it expanded the relationship to give Pivotal access to the Air Force's testing facilities.
Pivotal isn't the only eVTOL project Page has backed. He previously funded Kittyhawk, which was run by Google X alum Sebastian Thrun, but pulled the plug on the startup in 2022.
Pivotal does not talk much about Page's involvement, but the Google cofounder is understood to still be the sole bankroller, according to people familiar with the relationship. In an internal email sent in February and seen by BI, CEO Ken Karklin referred to "our investor's resources."
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