
Joby Aviation – Betting on Urban Air Mobility
In two-years’ time, an airline passenger could select a new mode of city-to-airport transportation if Joby Aviation’s eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft achieves FAA certification and entry into service, as expected, in 2025. The innovative battery-powered aircraft will bring sustainable technology to a market long dominated by gasoline-powered ground vehicles and turbine-driven helicopters burning Jet A. “We believe the Joby aircraft will provide the best balance of range, speed, payload, economics, and low noise footprint while being the lightest, quietest, and fastest four-passenger eVTOL,” said Oliver Walker-Jones, Head of Marketing, Communications & Brand for the Santa Cruz, California-based company. “This, combined with an electric, aerial ride-sharing service model linking ground mobility with rapid aerial trips, makes it uniquely and best suited to providing new urban air mobility (UAM) options for residents of congested regions.” JoeBen Bevirt, a successful serial entrepreneur, founded Joby Aviation, Inc. in 2009 with a small team of engineers. That cadre of engineers included Alex Stoll, who played a principal role in the design of the Joby aircraft. Stoll introduced Joby to Paul Sciarra, founder of Pinterest, who understood the transformative potential of the electrification of transportation as Joby’s first outside investor. He currently serves as Joby’s Executive Chairman. Today, the company counts more than 1,500 employees spread across its Santa Cruz headquarters and additional offices in San Carlos and Marina, California, as well as Washington, D.C. and Munich, Germany. Along the way, it has attracted world class investors, raising some $820 million in funding prior to going public on the New York Stock Exchange on August 11, 2021, under the ticker symbol JOBY. The investors include Capricorn Investment Group, JetBlue, Intel, Emerson Collective, Global Oryx Limited, Toyota, KTB Ventures, and Millennium Technology. More recently, SK Telecom, a South Korean mobile communications company, invested some