This year, the London Air Show gave pride of place to cVTOL machines. These flying machines and future prototypes were present in large numbers. Some are already in a well-advanced phase. This is the case of the company Joby Aviation.
Today, a team of more than 1,500 passionate engineers, experts and leaders are dedicated to bringing pioneering vision to life. Joby Aviation is developing a world-class manufacturing facility in Marina, California, and has offices and workshops in Santa Cruz, San Carlos, Washington, D.C. and Munich, Germany.
A small team of seven engineers worked day and night in “The Barn,” the workshop in the mountains above Santa Cruz. They explored the frontiers of technologies such as electric motors, flight software and lithium-ion batteries, designing nearly every component from scratch.
The first full-scale demonstrator took flight in 2017. In 2020, the company signed an initial Level 4 “G-1” certification basis with the FAA, after receiving an initial Level 2 G-1 certification from the agency in 2019. This document provides a clear path to certifying our aircraft for commercial flight.
In the year that Joby was listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: JOBY), the pre-production prototype flew over 5,300 miles, including a 154.6-mile flight on a single charge.
They also built a second pre-production prototype, completed our first FAA Production Conformance Inspection, and officially began our journey to become the first eVTOL-certified airline.
In 2022, in partnership with NASA, Joby Aviation confirmed the aircraft’s revolutionary noise footprint, demonstrating that it will blend into the existing soundscape of cities.
In 2023, the company launched production at the Marina, California pilot production facility, with the first aircraft rolling off the line in June to begin flight testing. That same year, they also announced plans to build the first scaled-down production facility in Dayton, Ohio, the birthplace of aviation. The 140-acre site at Dayton International Airport will be capable of delivering up to 500 aircraft per year once fully developed.
The company made its first delivery to the Air Force under our $131 million contract to deliver and operate aircraft for the DoD. The aircraft, stationed at Edwards Air Force Base, is being used on the base to demonstrate logistics missions.
As of 2024, Joby’s two pre-production prototype aircraft have flown more than 1,500 flights, totalling more than 33,000 miles, over the past four years.
JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and CEO of Joby: “Over the course of this test programme, our team has shown the world how real electric air taxis are, with tens of thousands of miles flown using today’s battery technology. Our pre-production aircraft were the second full-scale generation of Joby’s design, and their performance met or exceeded our predictions throughout the programme, successfully achieving our targets for maximum range, speed, and a revolutionary acoustic footprint. Successfully completing this rigorous test programme has allowed us to proceed to ramp production with full confidence, the second of which rolled off the line at our production line in Marina, California, earlier this week. Learnings from the flight test programme have been invaluable to our certification programme and to the broader development of regulatory frameworks around electric VTOL aircraft, validating the performance, safety, and acoustics of our design while providing insight into daily operations and maintenance.”
Joby Aviation, Inc. is a California-based transportation company developing an all-electric, vertical take-off and landing air taxi which it intends to operate as part of a fast, quiet, and convenient service in cities around the world.
