Joeben Bevirt, CEO:
“…I founded JOBY more than 10 years ago with the belief that electric propulsion would one day play a significant role in helping to protect our planet. Today, aviation accounts for 3% of the world’s carbon emission, but the sector’s total impact is almost 3 times that figure. What I saw back in 2009 was a number of technologies, that combined, had the potential to make 0 emissions electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles come to life. With that vision in mind, we brought together an incredible team of engineers and built a vertically integrated Company to develop all of the core technologies we would need to make this dream a reality.
As in the early days of ground EV, there just wasn’t and still isn’t an existing supply chain for most of the critical components. We had to build these ourselves, things like motors and actuators, inverters, and battery packs, sensors, and our low noise propellers. This approach was harder and it took longer, but the result is a more highly integrated aircraft built with technology that makes it more performance and more capable than other design. Taking this approach also allowed us to iterate rapidly on our aircraft design until we landed on what we believe is the very best configuration for this new market. Combining safety, speed, a low noise signature, and affordable operating economics. And we’ve been flying that aircraft at full-scale since 2017.
At Joby, we believe in taking on challenges that other shy away from. We approach them without any preconceived ideas and we work hard and fast to solve them. This management philosophy has helped us to position ourselves at the leading edge of this new industry. In the last 12 months alone, we passed our 1000th flight test and became the first eVTOL Company to have the essay sign our G1 certification basis and became the first eVTOL Company to be granted a U.S. Air Force airworthiness status. This momentum was maintained in the third quarter of this year, and I’d like to share a couple of examples. First, we became the first Company to fly in electric aircraft as part of NASA ‘s Advanced Air Mobility National Campaign. We’ve had the opportunity to work really closely with the team at NASA on a range of electric propulsion projects over the last decade. But this was the first opportunity to let them see and hear our full-scale aircraft in action.
The 2-week testing program saw NASA bringing its mobile acoustics testing lab to our remote quite base in order to measure the low noise footprint of our aircraft. Their independent analysis will play an important part in supporting public acceptance of our new technology. Delivering an aircraft with a low noise footprint is fundamental to bringing our service closer to where customers want it. And so we also became the first Company to publish in-depth examples of our low noise footprint in action, releasing 4 separate films that let people hear what our aircrafts actually sound like, something that Joby is really leading the way on. Second, during the quarter, we flew what we believe to be the longest flight of an eVTOL aircraft to date, hovering a 154 miles on a single charge to 1-hour 17-minute flight validated our technology and design, proving yet again that Joby can accomplish things many thought impossible…..”