Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance is latest firm to invest in Joby Aviation

Insur­ance firm Aioi Nis­say Dowa has invest­ed in air taxi start-up Joby Avi­a­tion, as they aim to explore spe­cialised insur­ance prod­ucts and ser­vices while gain­ing knowl­edge about eVTOL air­craft.

A press release announc­ing the part­ner­ship has­n’t dis­closed the total amount invest­ed, but the Japan­ese-based com­pa­ny says it will also be ‘look­ing into inves­ti­gat­ing sim­i­lar insur­ance prod­ucts — in which insur­ance pre­mi­ums adjust accord­ing to the flight sta­tus of an air­craft’.

It said: “In line with our aim to become a ‘unique com­pa­ny with a dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter’, besides active­ly new areas such as CASE and MaaS, we think we should also enter the evTOL air­craft mar­ket as soon as pos­si­ble.

“There­fore, we took part in the Series C Financ­ing led by Toy­ota Motor Cor­po­ra­tion and invest­ed in Joby, which has advanced air­craft tech­nol­o­gy, devel­op­ment capa­bil­i­ties and a future oppor­tu­ni­ty for us to col­lab­o­rate with them on devel­op­ment of insur­ance prod­ucts unique to the air taxi mar­ket.”

Joby Avi­a­tion is one of the main fore­run­ners in the race to cer­ti­fy the first eVTOL air­craft in the mar­ket. The com­pa­ny has spent the last 10 years devel­op­ing its own qui­et, all-elec­tric air­craft and received seri­ous back­ing from auto­mo­tive giant Toy­ota ear­li­er this year — after rais­ing $590 mil­lion in fund­ing.

And last month, the com­pa­ny pro­gressed along­side Beta Tech­nolo­gies to Phase III of the Ini­tial Capa­bil­i­ties Open­ing as part of Agili­ty Prime’s ‘Air Race to Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion’.

Com­ment­ing on the new invest­ment, JoeBen Devirt, CEO of Joby Avi­a­tion, added: “The invest­ment from Aioi Nis­say Dowa Insur­ance has great val­ue to Joby in the Japan­ese mar­ket because of their desire to deeply under­stand this emerg­ing mobil­i­ty solu­tion and devel­op unique insur­ance solu­tions.

“We look for­ward to work­ing with Aioi Nis­say Dowa Insur­ance to devel­op eVTOL busi­ness for the Japan­ese mar­ket.”

Joby’s eVTOL pro­to­type has a max­i­mum cruise range of more than 300km, at a top speed of about 320km/h. It can seat up to four pas­sen­gers as well as a pilot and Joby says the air­craft is 100 times qui­eter than a con­ven­tion­al heli­copter.