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Joby completes flight of more than 150 miles with its eVTOL aircraft prototype on a single charge

Joby Avi­a­tion has flown a full-size pro­to­type of its eVTOL air­craft more than 150 miles on a sin­gle charge, which includes a ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing.

The flight, which was com­plet­ed at Joby’s elec­tric flight base in Big Sur, Cal­i­for­nia as part of its ongo­ing test flight cam­paign, rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for both the com­pa­ny and the indus­try.

The air­craft, pilot­ed from the ground by Joby’s Chief Test Pilot, Justin Paines, took off ver­ti­cal­ly before tran­si­tion­ing to for­ward flight and com­plet­ing 11 laps of a pre­de­fined cir­cuit.

After more than 1 hour and 17 min­utes in the air, the air­craft land­ed ver­ti­cal­ly — hav­ing cov­ered a total dis­tance of 154.6 statute miles. 

JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO of Joby, said: “We’ve achieved some­thing that many thought impos­si­ble with today’s bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy. By doing so we’ve tak­en the first step towards mak­ing con­ve­nient, emis­sions-free air trav­el between places like San Fran­cis­co and Lake Tahoe, Hous­ton and Austin, or Los Ange­les and San Diego an every­day real­i­ty.”

Joby’s pro­to­type air­craft uses com­mer­cial­ly avail­able lithi­um ion bat­ter­ies that have been adapt­ed for aero­space use.

An 811 NMC cath­ode and a graphite anode cell were select­ed, fol­low­ing inter­nal test­ing, to deliv­er the opti­mal trade-off between the spe­cif­ic ener­gy required to fly the air­craft 150 miles, the spe­cif­ic pow­er to take-off and land ver­ti­cal­ly and the cycle life to deliv­er an afford­able ser­vice. The com­pa­ny has demon­strat­ed in the lab that this bat­tery is capa­ble of more than 10,000 of its expect­ed nom­i­nal flight cycles.

The team devel­op­ing Joby’s ener­gy sys­tem is led by Jon Wag­n­er, Head of Pow­er­train and Elec­tron­ics, who pre­vi­ous­ly led bat­tery engi­neer­ing at Tes­la.

Com­ment­ing on the achieve­ment, he said: “Since the day I joined Joby four years ago, we’ve worked hard to max­imise the ener­gy effi­cien­cy of this air­craft and prove what we have always known to be pos­si­ble with today’s bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy. With the right cell chem­istry and a lot of hard work across the entire engi­neer­ing team, we’ve been able to cre­ate a remark­ably effi­cient air­craft that can make the most of today’s com­mer­cial­ly avail­able bat­ter­ies.”

Justin Paines, a for­mer Roy­al Air Force test pilot who helped devel­op the con­trols for the F‑35 Joint Strike Fight­er before join­ing Joby as its Chief Test Pilot, added: “We’ve been build­ing up to this for sev­er­al months now, fly­ing pro­gres­sive­ly longer sor­ties.

“As we’ve extend­ed the range, we’ve been able to iden­ti­fy mod­i­fi­ca­tions to the air­craft that improve effi­cien­cy and, for the final few tests, we were able to upgrade the land­ing gear on our pro­to­type air­craft to one with a drag pro­file more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of what we expect to see on our pro­duc­tion air­craft. 

“While we still have plen­ty more test­ing to do, achiev­ing this mile­stone is an impor­tant val­i­da­tion of our tech­nol­o­gy and I’m incred­i­bly proud to have played a small part in what is, to our knowl­edge, the longest all-elec­tric eVTOL flight per­formed to date.” 

Joby’s air­craft is expect­ed to start com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger ser­vice in 2024, trans­port­ing a pilot and four pas­sen­gers at speeds of up to 200 mph. 

The com­pa­ny is work­ing towards cer­ti­fy­ing its air­craft with the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, hav­ing already agreed on a “G‑1” cer­ti­fi­ca­tion basis and been award­ed a US Air Force Air­wor­thi­ness Approval.

Pic­tured is the route of Jobys full scale pro­to­type which flew more than 150 miles on a sin­gle charge Cred­it Joby Avi­a­tion
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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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