Joby Aviation receives funding from Toyota to launch electric air taxi service

Joby Avi­a­tion has raised $590 mil­lion in Series C fund­ing, includ­ing $394 mil­lion from lead investor Toy­ota Motor Cor­po­ra­tion, to sup­port the devel­op­ment of its all-elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (VTOL) air­craft.

This new invest­ment for the Cal­i­for­nia-based aero­space com­pa­ny brings its total fund­ing, includ­ing pre­vi­ous rounds, to $720 mil­lion. Pri­or investors, includ­ing SPARX Group, Intel Cap­i­tal, Capri­corn Invest­ment Group, Jet­Blue Tech­nol­o­gy Ven­tures, Toy­ota AI Ven­tures, and AME Cloud Ven­tures, also con­tributed to the round, and were joined by new investors Bail­lie Gif­ford and Glob­al Oryx (ALJ family’s invest­ment arm). 

Joven Bevirt, Founder and CEO of Joby Avi­a­tion, said: “We are build­ing a new sys­tem for trans­porta­tion to trans­form your dai­ly life, at greater safe­ty and, in time, at a sim­i­lar cost to dri­ving. This col­lab­o­ra­tion with Toy­ota rep­re­sents an unprece­dent­ed com­mit­ment of mon­ey and resources for us and this new indus­try from one of the world’s lead­ing automak­ers. 

“Toy­ota is known glob­al­ly for the qual­i­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty of their prod­ucts dri­ven by metic­u­lous atten­tion to detail and man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es. I am excit­ed to har­ness Toyota’s engi­neer­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing prowess help­ing to dri­ve us to achieve our dream of sav­ing a bil­lion peo­ple an hour a day.”

Joby Avi­a­tion will now ben­e­fit from Toyota’s exper­tise in man­u­fac­tur­ing, qual­i­ty and cost con­trol, to sup­port the devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion of its air taxi ser­vice. Shige­ki Tomoya­ma, the Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of Toy­ota Motor Cor­po­ra­tion, will also join Joby Aviation’s board of direc­tors.

Akio Toy­o­da, Toy­ota Pres­i­dent and CEO, said :“Air trans­porta­tion has been a long-term goal for Toy­ota, and while we con­tin­ue our work in the auto­mo­bile busi­ness, this agree­ment sets our sights to the sky. 

“As we take up the chal­lenge of air trans­porta­tion togeth­er with Joby, an inno­va­tor in the emerg­ing eVTOL space, we tap the poten­tial to rev­o­lu­tion­ize future trans­porta­tion and life. Through this new and excit­ing endeav­or, we hope to deliv­er free­dom of move­ment and enjoy­ment to cus­tomers every­where, on land, and now, in the sky.”

Joby Aviation’s pilot­ed air­craft can seat up to four pas­sen­gers and reach a top speed of 200 miles per hour — fly­ing more than 150 miles on a sin­gle charge. Pro­duc­ing zero emis­sions and near-silent when fly­ing, it is also 100 times qui­eter than a con­ven­tion­al air­craft dur­ing take-off and land­ing. 

Found­ed in 2009, Joby Aviation’s mis­sion is to get peo­ple to their des­ti­na­tion five times faster than dri­ving — help­ing to reduce urban con­ges­tion and accel­er­ate the shift to more sus­tain­able modes of trans­porta­tion.