California-based aircraft urban air mobility (UAM) developer Joby Aviation officially went public following the completion of a business combination with special purpose acquisition company Reinvent Technology Partners (RTP) on Tuesday. As previously reported by AVweb, Joby announced plans to take the company public last February along with releasing the first in-flight video of its electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) prototype. To celebrate the move, Joby displayed its aircraft outside of the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning.
“Aviation connects the world in critically important ways but today it does that at the expense of our planet,” said Joby founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt. “By taking Joby public we have the opportunity to drive a renaissance in aviation, making emissions-free flight a part of everyday life.”
According to Joby, its proceeds raised plus cash on the balance sheet came to approximately $1.6 billion as of March 31, 2021, funding which the company expects to see it through initial commercial operations. Along with agreeing to a G-1 certification basis with the FAA and putting in an application for a Part 135 air carrier certificate, Joby reports that it has currently completed more than 1,000 test flights of it eVTOL design including a 154-mile trip flown last month. Powered by six electric motors, Joby’s aircraft is expected to seat a pilot and four passengers and have a range of at least 150 miles and top speed of 200 MPH.
$1.6B divided by the likely low numbers produced = BIG bucks per vehicle. Swell investment … but then, that’s what all this is about.
Well, looking at the picture, I hope that they conducted extensive flutter testing.
It will be VFR-only for a while and therefore more of a novelty than a practical form of transportation so I wouldn’t expect tons of customers. Properly trained pilots will be in short supply until there is enough business to justify a larger pilot workforce. It doesn’t look like it has a lot of wing area to glide well and the props will create a lot of drag in an engine-out situation so I wonder about its glide performance. More likely it will auto-rotate like a helicopter but there’s not much mass in each rotor head and there are a lot of them so a full-auto touchdown would be very tricky. I would expect it to include a ballistic chute to deal with these problems. The absence of performance data and specifications on their website and in the media makes this sound more like marketing hype and less like a confidence-inspiring aircraft. We heard much the same thing about flying cars and roadable aircraft for many years and look where they are in the marketplace now. There’s no doubt that practical electric aircraft are on the way and VTOL aircraft are a great way to avoid the cost of building more airports and getting passengers closer to their destinations. I think we need less hand-waving and more solid science behind the product announcements.
Or, add a chute for the unlikely, but possible, full electric fail?
This is still early in the game. Electric powered vehicles seem to be a response to the threat of increased global warming. This summer’s significant heat and wild fires combined with the ongoing Covid pandemic have possibly increased the overall sense of threat that is motivating innovation.
Like the Witch trials, global warming extremism is also a mass psychosis that also has “solutions” that only make sense to those in the mass psychosis. Burning witches and battery powered helicopters are lunacy “solutions” that don’t have a thing to do with rational living.
“Aviation connects the world in critically important ways but today it does that at the expense of our planet,” said Joby founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt. “By taking Joby public we have the opportunity “By taking Joby public we have the opportunity to drive a renaissance in aviation, making emissions-free flight a part of everyday life.”
I get a kick out of Bevirt’s comment “By taking Joby public we have the opportunity to drive a renaissance in aviation, making emissions-free flight a part of everyday life.” Of course, they will not take the opportunity to drive a renaissance in aviation on their own with their money. The renaissance in aviation is the availability and use of OPM…other people’s money. When that is used up, renaissance over. With the track record of many other formerly aviation companies that failed to gather American investment backers, I expect all of this progress thus far ( whatever it really is) to end up elsewhere off shore.
“California-based aircraft urban air mobility (UAM) developer Joby Aviation officially went public following the completion of a business combination with special purpose acquisition company Reinvent Technology Partners (RTP) on Tuesday.” This makes perfect sense to have already completed a relationship with a “special acquisition company” whose terms are now called a “business combination” to further muddy the investment waters just prior to going public. Who actually owns Joby prior to going public? And where is the OPM’s money going to? Joby or Reinvent Technology Partners?
To me, all this means Joby is out of their own funds and now have positioned their hand out, playing the “green” card solicitating for OPM. Seems to me, if you have 1,000 flights under your belt, looking for OPM, they would have flown to and landed their vTOL in front of Wall Street rather than delivered by a via a fossil fueled truck. That would been a practical demonstration of their product and gotten the attention for a lot of potential OPM. Of course, that would demand a public displayed flight in an urban environment, within FAA regulations that still do not exist.
I really would like to see somebody succeed in this electrified aviation world. But doing the same thing over and over again that so many others have done and so far failed…yet expecting a different outcome… is insane. But that kind of business insanity seems to be the norm when it comes to aviation investment no matter if its electric or dinosaur powered. I guess I will have to wait and see what the Chinese do with Joby when that time comes. Already, it looks inevitable.
There was a time in this country when the market for light aircraft and charter by light aircraft had a MUCH larger market penetration. IMO, the primary reasons for the market loss can be attributed to airline deregulation, over regulation, and tort (subsequent destruction of inner city GA fields entrenched the problem along with the lowered demand for new aircraft eliminating economy of scale in manufacturing).
Deregulation made airline use more attractive while modern airlines have certainly reversed that. Tort is just a matter of money and risk. If you make these things much more safe and profitable, you can overcome that. That leaves the 4 years to rewrite a page FAA.
All these companies would be smart to be spending a LOT of their funds lobbying to change the FAA. Otherwise, it will be a collective failure.
Assuming they can fix the FAA interference before international competition destroys their chances, they might need to either win over or discredit all the community experts like the ones on this page. Otherwise, most people who know a pilot will think these things are all death traps.
Hope CEO JoeBen Bevirt has good lawyers. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is not tolerating these environmental promise schemes anymore. So many of these companies have raised mega money and delivered absolutely nothing more then fancy graphics. We all know that you have to certify the aircraft before starting an Air-Taxi. The General Operations Manual (GOM) requires “FAA Approved” documentation for flight training and a maintenance program. Joby doesn’t even have specifications yet. Blaming the FAA for not signing everything off on ‘hear-say’ is not going to work either. Next years headlines are already written: “It’s The FAA’s Fault for Delays”.
“Indicted Nikola Corp. founder Trevor Milton sold 7 million of his 79 million shares in the electric truck startup last week, pulling in $71.5 million that he may need for his legal fight against federal fraud charges.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/miltons-sell-off-indicted-nikola-161738546.html
Lordstown Motors CEO is probably calling in his high price lawyers too.
I dunno. If many of the best performing aircraft of all time were designed and built in less time than the FAA responds to the sum of the submittals they demand, maybe they might be at fault?
If your argument is that the FAA is a known roadblock which any responsible company should realize will take years to get through, then I’m okay with that, but that doesn’t mean the FAA isn’t part of the problem.
No one seems to have noticed that they are being funded through a SPAC. This is a new way to go public with private investors. The track record of these “companies” is not good. Historically, the only people that make money using a SPAC are the initial founders of these special purpose acquisition companies. Top that off with the very lengthy time frame to get approvals from the FAA regardless of the airframe, I would not recommend anyone buy into this.