Joby Aviation teams up with ANA Holdings to help establish new eVTOL ride-sharing service in Japan

Joby Avi­a­tion is part­ner­ing with ANA Hold­ings, Japan’s largest air­line, to bring its aer­i­al ride-shar­ing ser­vices to the coun­try.

ANA and Joby are set to col­lab­o­rate on all aspects of estab­lish­ing this rev­o­lu­tion­ary new form of trans­porta­tion in Japan, includ­ing the devel­op­ment of infra­struc­ture, pilot train­ing, flight oper­a­tions, air traf­fic man­age­ment, pub­lic accep­tance, and the reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments to oper­ate.

The inte­gra­tion with ground trans­porta­tion will also be con­sid­ered, with Toy­ota sup­port­ing the effort. The par­ties will also con­duct joint dis­cus­sions with rel­e­vant pri­vate com­pa­nies as well as local and nation­al gov­ern­ments.

Toy­ota Motor Cor­po­ra­tion (Toy­ota) also joined the part­ner­ship, with the inten­tion of explor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties such as ground-based trans­porta­tion.

JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO of Joby, said: “Joby exists to help peo­ple save time while reduc­ing their car­bon foot­print. Japan offers us a spec­tac­u­lar oppor­tu­ni­ty to do just that with 92% of the pop­u­la­tion liv­ing in urban areas and Tokyo reg­is­ter­ing as one of the top 20 most con­gest­ed cities in the world.

“We’re hum­bled to be work­ing with ANA, an air­line that has deserved­ly been award­ed SKYTRAX’s 5‑Star rat­ing nine years in a row, and we look for­ward to work­ing close­ly with them to bring our aer­i­al ride-shar­ing ser­vice to real­i­ty in Japan.”

While Joby’s aer­i­al ride-shar­ing ser­vice will be oper­at­ed direct­ly by the com­pa­ny and offered to pas­sen­gers via the Joby app or Uber app in core U.S. mar­kets, this lat­est announce­ment reflects the com­pa­ny’s strat­e­gy to part­ner with local com­pa­nies com­mit­ted to deliv­er­ing excep­tion­al cus­tomer ser­vice and oper­a­tional excel­lence to launch its ser­vice in select mar­kets out­side the U.S. Addi­tion­al­ly, Joby expects to work with local ground mobil­i­ty part­ners to deliv­er seam­less, end- to-end jour­neys for cus­tomers.

The part­ners in this agree­ment are all exist­ing mem­bers of Japan’s Pub­lic-Pri­vate Con­fer­ence for the Future Air Mobil­i­ty Rev­o­lu­tion, estab­lished by the Min­istry of Econ­o­my, Trade and Invest­ment and the Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture, Trans­port and Tourism to accel­er­ate the adop­tion of aer­i­al rideshar­ing in the coun­try.

Koji Shi­ba­ta, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Direc­tor and Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent at ANA HD, said: “ANA has 70 years of expe­ri­ence deliv­er­ing safe and reli­able flights to cus­tomers across the world. We’re proud to bring that oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence to the table as part of this part­ner­ship and to be at the fore­front of intro­duc­ing this rev­o­lu­tion­ary form of trans­port to Japan.

“Our cus­tomers val­ue effi­cien­cy very high­ly, so being able to pro­vide them with the option to trav­el rapid­ly — and sus­tain­ably — from an inter­na­tion­al air­port to a down­town loca­tion is very appeal­ing.”

The con­cept of aer­i­al rideshar­ing has been rapid­ly gath­er­ing momen­tum in Japan as the coun­try accel­er­ates its efforts to pre­pare for the 2025 World Expo to be held in the west­ern cap­i­tal of Osa­ka, the third most pop­u­lous city in Japan and the largest com­po­nent of the Kei­han­shin met­ro­pol­i­tan area of more than 18 mil­lion res­i­dents.

Joby already has strong con­nec­tions with Japan, hav­ing worked along­side Toy­ota since 2019. As well as con­tin­u­ing to lend their exper­tise on man­u­fac­tur­ing process devel­op­ment and high-vol­ume pro­duc­tion to Joby. Toy­ota is Joby’s largest out­side investor, with near­ly $400 mil­lion invest­ed to date.

Joby has spent more than a decade devel­op­ing the tech­nol­o­gy behind its air­craft, com­plet­ing more than 1,000 test flights and becom­ing the first, and only, eVTOL com­pa­ny to sign a G‑1 (stage 4) Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Basis for their air­craft with the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA).

Joby’s pilot­ed, five-seater eVTOL air­craft will have a max­i­mum range of 150 miles (241 kilo­me­tres), top speed of 200 mph (321 km/h) and a low-noise pro­file to allow it to access built-up areas. As an exam­ple, a 31-mile jour­ney from Osa­ka sta­tion to Kan­sai Inter­na­tion­al Air­port could take less than 15 min­utes by air, rather than one hour by car.