Joby Aviation, Inc. (Joby) develops an all-electric, vertical take-off and landing (‘eVTOL’) air taxi which it intends to operate in cities around the world.
The Joby eVTOL is designed to transport a pilot and up to four passengers, or an expected payload of up to 1,000 pounds, at speeds of up to 200 mph. The aircraft is optimized for urban routes, with a target range of up to 100 miles on a single charge.
The company’s aircraft has been specifically designed with multiple redundancies across...
Joby Aviation, Inc. (Joby) develops an all-electric, vertical take-off and landing (‘eVTOL’) air taxi which it intends to operate in cities around the world.
The Joby eVTOL is designed to transport a pilot and up to four passengers, or an expected payload of up to 1,000 pounds, at speeds of up to 200 mph. The aircraft is optimized for urban routes, with a target range of up to 100 miles on a single charge.
The company’s aircraft has been specifically designed with multiple redundancies across systems and components for enhanced safety, and to achieve a considerably lower noise footprint than that of similarly sized conventional aircraft or helicopters. It is quiet at takeoff, and near silent when flying overhead, which the company anticipates will allow it to operate from new vertiport locations nearer to where people live and work, in addition to utilizing the more than 5,000 heliport and airport infrastructure facilities already in existence in the U.S.
The company is in the process of certifying its aircraft with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This involves a rigorous process of design, testing, verification, and quality control. The company has also begun working with regulators in other countries, including the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to pursue commercialization opportunities in those markets. While foreign certification in many countries leverages its work with the FAA, in some, such as the UAE, it may also provide a path to commercial operations prior to receiving certification in the United States.
In November 2024, the company completed its first international exhibition flight at Toyota’s Higashi-Fuji Technical Center in Shizuoka, Japan. Shortly thereafter, in December 2024, it completed a series of flight tests in Korea as part of the K-UAM Grand Challenge.
The company does not intend to sell its aircraft to independent third parties or individual customers as a primary business model. Instead, it plans to manufacture, own, and operate its aircraft itself, building a vertically integrated transportation company that will deliver transportation services to customers, including government agencies, such as the U.S. Air Force (USAF) through sales or contracted operations, and to individual end-users through a convenient app-based aerial ridesharing service. The company began initial service operations with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) in September 2023, and is targeting initial passenger operations in 2025 or 2026.
The company operates a powertrain and electronics engineering and manufacturing facility in San Carlos, California, as well as 130,000 square feet of additive and subtractive manufacturing, machining, aircraft assembly, and flight test facilities in Marina, California. With local support from California state incentives and grants, it has begun construction of a new building at its Marina site to support manufacturing and training that will double the footprint of that location. These facilities are utilized to design, build, and test the components, systems, and assemblies for the company’s aircraft as it refines its design and hones its production process. The company’s high-rate production facility is planned for Dayton, Ohio, where it purchased a 40,300 square foot facility in 2024, and has identified a separate 140-acre site that has the potential to support significant growth over time, with enough land to build over two million square feet of manufacturing space.
The company’s preparations for commercial passenger service include forming sector-leading relationships with partners, such as Toyota, Uber, and Delta Air Lines, all of whom have invested in Joby, as well as global partners, such as ANA Airlines in Japan, and the Road and Transport Authority in Dubai. It has also established relationships with infrastructure providers, including fixed base operators of landing sites, such as Atlantic Aviation, Helo Holdings, Inc. (HHI), and Skyports, to facilitate infrastructure development in key markets. Additionally, the company has long-standing relationships in research and development with federal government agencies as it evolved its design.
Aircraft
The company’s team of world-class engineers has been working for more than a decade to develop an aircraft specifically designed for aerial ridesharing. Over that period, it has built a team that is deeply committed to vertically integrated engineering, testing, prototyping, and manufacturing. Developing much of the aircraft in-house has required greater up-front investment, but has also allowed the company to develop systems and components that are specifically engineered for their intended applications.
The company designed its aircraft to be safe, quiet, and performant, all characteristics that are critical to unlocking the aerial ridesharing market.
Safe: Distributed electric propulsion has greater redundancy than centrally-located internal combustion engines. Each of the company’s six propellers is powered by two independent electric motors, each in turn driven by independent drive units. Each drive unit draws power from one of four separate batteries onboard the aircraft.
This emphasis on redundancy is extended to other critical subsystems of the aircraft, including the flight computers, control surfaces, communications network, and actuators. The result is a design intended to enhance safety across critical aircraft systems compared to similarly sized conventional aircraft and helicopters.
While these advancements in technology contribute to the overall safety of the aircraft, the company recognizes that safely delivering a commercial aviation operation requires both organizational and cultural commitments. It has made safety a core value, and actively promotes that value across the team.
Given the company’s intent to both manufacture and operate its aircraft, it is developing a comprehensive, vertically-integrated, Enterprise Safety Management System (SMS), covering aircraft, manufacturing, operations, maintenance, and flight training. Through the enterprise approach, SMS interfaces will facilitate the exchange of information to continuously improve the safety of its aircraft and operations. In 2024, the company was accepted into the FAA Voluntary SMS for Air Operations.
Quiet: Developing an aircraft with a low noise footprint that allows for regular operations within metropolitan areas is critical to community acceptance. In addition to the benefits afforded by an all-electric powertrain, the company has devoted substantial engineering resources to reduce the noise signature of the aircraft even further. The result is an aircraft that is significantly quieter than a twin-engine helicopter, exhibiting a noise profile in the range of 65 dBA during takeoff and landing (the noisiest configuration), roughly the volume of a normal speaking voice. In over-head flight as low as 500 feet, the aircraft is near silent. The company has independently validated the noise footprint of its prototype aircraft through its work with NASA.
Performant: The company’s commitment to vertical integration and in-house development has allowed for optimization of systems and components across the aircraft, resulting in better energy efficiency, range, and speed than what would otherwise be available using commercial-off-the-shelf components. The company’s aircraft demonstrates energy efficiency comparable to best-in-class electric ground vehicles. While it anticipates the company’s average journey to be around 25 miles, the expected range and speed of its aircraft will allow it to service a more diverse set of passengers and trips, resulting in greater operational flexibility.
The company intends to continue to build its intellectual property (IP) portfolio with respect to the technologies that it develops and refines.
Charging
The company has developed proprietary charging infrastructure optimized for electric aircraft. Joby’s Global Electric Aviation Charging System (GEACS) is designed to support the safe and efficient operations of electric aircraft, including simultaneous charging of multiple battery packs, battery conditioning for ultra-fast charging, and secure data download to address safety and cybersecurity. After 10 years of development, in 2023, the company announced that it would open-source and share the specifications for the universal charging interface it developed, making it freely available to the industry.
Business Model
The company’s business model is based on capturing the most value through vertical integration. The company is an important part of its design, manufacturing, and operations, as it enables it to develop a more performant aircraft and tightly-integrated operations with a goal of long-term, durable margins. Particularly in a new industry, such as Urban Air Mobility, everything from the exacting certification requirements for an electric air taxi to the individual experience of end users can be better managed with a vertically integrated business model. When the company started the business, the existing supply base did not have the technology it required in the size, dimensions, and power needed. There are multiple examples of Joby-engineered parts, such as the company’s flight control computer or direct drive electronic propulsion unit, that generate more power in a smaller footprint, and with fewer moving parts than ever before possible. Close collaboration between design, production, and testing teams yield tight, iterative cycles, leading to innovative solutions in less time than if it were dependent on outside vendors.
Aerial Ridesharing Service
The company intends to build an aerial ridesharing service powered by a network of eVTOL aircraft that it will manufacture and operate. It is developing an app-based platform that will enable consumers to book rides directly through the company’s service. The company also plans to integrate access to its service into leading third-party demand aggregation platforms, including through its partnerships with Uber and Delta Air Lines. Whether the company’s service is accessed through its own platform, or through a partner app, it will integrate ground transportation providers for the first and last mile with its aerial service, providing a seamless, end-to-end travel experience.
The company refers to trips that integrate air and ground legs together as multimodal. By building network management software that efficiently sequences multimodal trips, it can provide substantial time savings to travelers while coordinating the development of optimally-located vertiport infrastructure. Additionally, the company is developing software that will coordinate multiple riders into each air leg, allowing it to drive high utilization rates for its aircraft, and, in turn, progressive reduction in end-user pricing.
The company’s app-based aerial ridesharing service will be fast, convenient, comfortable, environmentally sustainable, and, over time, progressively more affordable. By maintaining full control over the design, development, test, manufacture, and operations of its aircraft, the company intends to deliver a service that is optimized from beginning to end, positioning it to be the leading company in this market.
The company’s vertically integrated business model ensures it is not simply manufacturing aircraft for sale and receiving one-time revenues, but instead generating recurring revenues over the lifetime of the aircraft, with corresponding benefits to contribution margin.
Partnerships
Across each of the important activities of high-volume manufacturing, go-to-market strategy, and pre-certification operations, the company has established strong collaborations and relationships with Toyota, Delta, Uber, SK Telecom, and the DOD to help achieve its objectives and de-risk its commercial strategy.
Toyota Motor Corporation
As of December 31, 2024, Toyota had invested in Joby, making Toyota the company’s largest outside investor. In 2024, Toyota signed a stock purchase agreement pursuant to which it committed to subject to the satisfaction of certain closing conditions. As of December 31, 2024, no closing had occurred under the stock purchase agreement. In addition to their substantial financial backing, Toyota engineers are working shoulder to shoulder with Joby counterparts on a daily basis, collaborating on projects, such as factory planning and layout, manufacturing process development, and design for manufacturability. In 2023, the company signed a long-term supply agreement with Toyota to supply key powertrain and actuation components for its aircraft.
The company’s collaboration with Toyota has provided, and continues to provide it with a significant competitive advantage as it designs and builds out its high-volume manufacturing capability. In addition to being the world’s largest automaker, Toyota is globally recognized for delivering quality, safety, and reliability at scale, all of which are necessary characteristics in aerospace manufacturing.
Uber Technologies, Inc.
The company’s partnership with Uber Technologies, Inc., and its acquisition of Uber’s Elevate business, provides it with two important competitive advantages in its go-to-market planning and execution.
First, through the company’s 2021 acquisition of Elevate, it was able to welcome experienced team members from Uber, along with a set of software tools focused on planning and operations that the Elevate team had developed over several years.
Additionally, the company’s collaboration agreement with Uber provides for the integration of its aerial ridesharing service into the Uber app across global markets. Uber will also be reciprocally integrated into any future Joby Aviation mobile application on a non-exclusive basis to service the ground-based component of multi-modal journeys booked by customers through its application. The goal of this mutual integration is to ensure passengers can access a multi-modal travel experience, seamlessly transitioning from ground-to-air-to-ground with unified, one-click booking.
Delta Air Lines, Inc.
In October 2022, the company entered into a collaboration agreement with Delta Air Lines, Inc. (Delta) to develop a long-term strategic relationship for a premium airport transportation service that it plans to offer to Delta passengers in select markets through the Delta booking platform.
SK Telecom
In June 2023, SK Telecom, South Korea’s leading telecommunications conglomerate (SKT), invested in Joby. As one of the largest and most innovative companies in Asia, SKT operates many complementary lines of business, including telecom data, navigation systems, EV charging network and operations, rideshare, and real estate assets. In 2024, Joby participated alongside SKT in Korea’s K-UAM Grand Challenge, a phased demonstration program designed to foster the adoption of aerial ridesharing in Korea, successfully completing the work it set out to do in 2023.
U.S. Air Force
In December 2020, the company became, to its knowledge, the first company to receive airworthiness approval for an eVTOL aircraft from the USAF, and in the first quarter of 2021, it officially began on-base operations under contract pursuant to the USAF’s Agility Prime program. The company’s multi-year relationship with the USAF and other U.S. Government agencies has provided it with a compelling opportunity to more thoroughly understand the operational capabilities and maintenance profiles of its aircraft in advance of commercial launch. By operating its aircraft on the U.S. military installations, the company has gained valuable insight that will result in a more reliable service at launch. In 2023, it marked its first delivery to a customer by delivering and flying the first eVTOL aircraft at Edwards Air Force base as part of its contract with the DOD, and in January 2025, it delivered its second aircraft under this contract. The Agility Prime program also supported the company’s June 2024 flight of its hybrid hydrogen-electric demonstrator. As government programs continue to focus on early-stage, emerging technologies, the company anticipates some federal program investment in eVTOLs may be reduced, and it does not expect the USAF to fully exercise the remaining options under its existing contract.
Intellectual Property
As of January 17, 2025, the company had over 270 issued or allowed patents (of which over 200 are U.S. filings) and over 215 pending patent applications (of which over 120 are U.S. filings). The patent portfolio is primarily related to eVTOL vehicle technology, and UAM/aerial rideshare technology.
The company’s patent filings include over 135 issued or allowed patents, and over 145 pending patent applications relating to its aircraft, its architecture, powertrain, acoustics, energy storage and distribution systems, flight control system, and system resiliency, as well as certain additional aircraft configurations and technologies. Additionally, it has over 130 issued or allowed patents and over 65 pending patent applications related to aerial rideshare technology, such as fleet and infrastructure utilization, routing, air traffic coordination, rideshare software applications, vertiport infrastructure, and ancillary computer technologies.
Research and Development
The company’s research and development expenses were $477.2 million during the year ended December 31, 2024.
History
Joby Aviation, Inc. was founded in 2009.
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