America's first air taxi, delivered ahead of schedule!Yesterday, American eVTOL manufacturer JobyAviation officially delivered the first electric air taxi to the U.S. Air Force. This is a full half a year ahead of the previously expected delivery time, and Joby Aviation has become the first company in the United States to deliver an all-electric air taxi. This air taxi will be used to perform a series of logistics tasks, including cargo and passenger transportation, and will not only be used by the Air Force in the future, but will also enter the mass market.
Prior to this, JobyAviation stated that it would launch large-scale commercial use in 2025, popularize air taxis in Dayton, Ohio, and achieve delivery and operation.
At present, the eVTOL industry is on the eve of an explosion. Looking around the world, this track has already attracted many players. In addition to leading aviation companies such as Boeing, Airbus and Embraer, it has also attracted automotive industry giants such as Volkswagen, Geely and Xpeng.
However, the challenges faced by eVTOL companies are not small. For example, eVTOL aircraft have a very high technical threshold and a long research and development cycle. The biggest challenge is to solve the contradiction between intelligence, cost and safety.
As JobyAviation begins to deliver the first air taxi, "flying" is getting closer and closer to us.
Toyota gives away money and people
In April this year, JobyAviation signed a $131 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). JobyAviation will deliver at least nine aircraft to the U.S. Department of Defense, two of which will be used as air taxis at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
According to plan, JobyAviation will deliver the first air taxi in early 2024, but now the time is about 6 months ahead of schedule. JobyAviation stated that the air taxi that has been delivered will soon be flown by US military pilots and used as a demonstration eVTOL for performing logistics tasks in the base.
At the same time, JobyAviation pilots will also participate in demonstration flights. As part of the cooperation with the US Air Force, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will also use the air taxi to conduct research on national airspace.
Source: JobyAviation
According to JobyAviation, the U.S. Air Force and Marine Corps have visited their flight tests in California several times over the past year.
In April, four pilots completed a fully remote-controlled transition flight of the aircraft, and two groups of Marines conducted a mission analysis of potential logistics and medical applications for eVTOLs in May.
As for why it was delivered to the U.S. Air Force first rather than to individual and corporate customers, the main reason is that the U.S. Defense Innovation Department provided funding to JobyAviation in the early stages of the project, and the two sides also had many cooperations. It can be said that Joby can develop so rapidly without the support of the U.S. defense department.
In addition to the support of the U.S. military, JobyAviation has also received substantial financial support from Intel, Delta Airlines, Toyota Motor and other companies, and Toyota has a lot of credit.
Toyota is currently JobyAviation's largest external shareholder, having invested approximately US$400 million in the latter. In June of this year, Tetsuo Ogawa, CEO of Toyota North America, also joined JobyAviation’s board of directors.
Also at the same time, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved Joby’s electric air taxi for flight testing.
In addition to giving away money and people, Toyota even supplies goods for JobyAviation. In April this year, the two companies announced that Toyota had agreed to provide key components for Joby's eVTOL aircraft. Toyota will make some parts of the aircraft's powertrain and brakes and then send them to Joby's powertrain manufacturing plant in San Carlos, California.
Toyota's significance to JobyAviation goes beyond that. In addition to providing aircraft parts, Toyota also helped Joby establish a production pilot in Marina.
“They have also collaborated with us in design, manufacturing processes, quality management, development, etc.,” said Didier Papadopoulos, Joby Aircraft OEM head. “They (Toyota) have been an integral part of our business from beginning to end, and we are very grateful for this partnership.”
The obsession of a serial entrepreneur
In total, JobyAviation, founded in 2009, has been in business for more than ten years. It is an airline located in California. Its founder, JoeBenBevirt, is a serial entrepreneur. Before founding JobyAviation, he already had a lot of entrepreneurial experience.
The first company founded by JoeBenBevirt was a robot manufacturer - Velocity11, which mainly built robots for transporting liquids and detecting drugs.
Velocity11 was later sold to Agilent in 2011, when Agilent was still a subsidiary of HP.
After the success of his first venture, Bevirt started his own business again in 2006. He founded a company called Joby, named after his child, which mainly produces a multi-functional tripod that looks like an octopus and is suitable for taking pictures with cameras and mobile phones.
The following year he sold Joby, which was eventually acquired by Vitec in 2017, a leading global provider of high-end branded hardware and software solutions.
After acquiring a certain amount of funds, Bevirt founded JobyEnergy, a company that mainly develops large-scale high-altitude kite power generation equipment to generate green electricity.
Then, like the previous two companies, Bevirt sold JobyEnergy, and the company was eventually acquired by Google.
In 2009, Bevirt set its sights on eVTOL aircraft. After Joby Aviation was established, it quickly designed its first aircraft called Monarch Personal Air Vehicle (PAV).
The Monarch is equipped with eight electric motors mounted on a rotatable wing connected to a high-performance glider fuselage. It is designed to cruise at a speed of 161 kilometers per hour and has a range of 100 miles, but the aircraft has never been flight tested.
It was not until 6 years after the company was founded, in 2015, that Joby Aviation first flew a scaled-down prototype. Two years later, it flew a full-size prototype, and began production and testing of the prototype in 2019.
Flying cars are even more expensive than building cars. In the more than 10 years since its establishment, Joby Aviation has won the favor of many investors. In 2016, JobyAviation completed Series A financing, led by Capricorn. Two years later, it received US$100 million in Series B financing, led by Intel, with participation from Singapore's EDBI, JetBlue Technology Ventures and Toyota.
In 2020, JobyAviation announced that it had raised US$620 million in Series C financing, of which Toyota Motor invested US$394 million.
It is reported that the reason why Toyota invested in JobyAviation is because Akio Toyoda wanted to realize the dream of his grandfather, Toyota founder Kiichiro Toyoda, about flying in the air through JobyAviation.
Then JobyAviation started its listing plan. In 2021, JobyAviation was successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange through a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), and became the first electric aviation company to be successfully listed in the United States through a SPAC.
On the first day of trading, Joby's stock price soared by about 20% after opening at $10.62. However, currently, its market value has shrunk from US$6.8 billion that year to US$4.496 billion.
Source: YahooFinance
In a press statement before Joby went public, it was described as "Tesla meets Uber in the sky."
JobyAviation estimates that it will deliver 500 electric flying taxis per year starting in 2025, and plans to start carrying passengers as early as 2025. It is reported that consumers only need to place an order on the relevant application, and booking "Flying" is as simple as using other ride-hailing software.
Rolled up from the ground to the sky
Flying cars are not a new concept, and this track has already seen a large influx of players.
According to a research report by Roland Berger Consulting, it is predicted that by 2025, 3,000 flying cars will be used as air taxis, airport shuttles and intercity flight services around the world, and by 2050, this number will reach 98,000.
Morgan Stanley predicts that the flying car industry will form a global market size of US$300 billion in 2030, reaching US$1.5 trillion by 2040.
While the market is growing rapidly, competition is also fierce. Previously, SpaceX, a rocket company owned by Musk, invested in the electric flying car Alef, which exploded in sales after obtaining a legal flight permit in the United States. Although it will not be officially mass-produced and delivered until 2025, the current orders have reached 2,500 vehicles.
Once these orders are delivered, Alef will receive $750 million in revenue. In addition, Doroni Aerospace, another eVTOL company in the United States, also successfully tested flight in the United States.
Back in China, Xpeng Huitian Voyager X2, a subsidiary of Xpeng Motors, previously conducted the world's first public flight in Dubai. It was also the world's first successful test flight of an electric vertical take-off and landing flying car.
The flying car project under the traditional car company Guangzhou Automobile Group also officially debuted this year. The flying car named "GOVE" completed its first flight in the world. GOVE uses an upper and lower assembleable structure. The upper layer has a rotor and a cockpit, which can take off directly. The base is a mobile carrier vehicle.
The country's first eVTOL commercial route has also been announced to be opened in October this year. It will only take 15 minutes to fly from Shenzhen to Zhuhai.
Therefore, both investors and consumers have great expectations for flying cars. We believe that the future will enter the era of flying cars, but currently it is much more difficult to combine the functions of flying and cars into one than building a car or an airplane separately.
For example, the planning of flight routes, the construction of supporting facilities, and corresponding regulations and policies are all inevitable problems.
There is also the issue of price. Flying cars may be able to solve the problem of land traffic congestion, but they are too expensive now. Alef's flying car Model A, which can both fly and run, is priced at US$300,000, equivalent to RMB 2.14 million.
This also means that flying cars in the early stage may just be toys for rich people, and how to sell flying cars is also a problem. It is difficult to achieve scale in the early stage, so it is impossible to reduce costs, and popularization is far away.