Joby Aviation to target air taxi services in South Korean market after announcing partnership with SK Telecom

Joby Avi­a­tion will work with telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions firm SK Tele­com to intro­duce emis­sions-free aer­i­al ride-shar­ing ser­vices to cities and com­mu­ni­ties in South Korea.

The agree­ment, which was signed by SKT’s CEO Ryu Young-sang and Joby’s founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt, will see the two com­pa­nies work close­ly on intro­duc­ing ser­vices in sup­port of the South Kore­an Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture, and Transport’s ‘K‑UAM’ (Kore­an Urban Air Mobil­i­ty) Roadmap, which was first announced in 2020.

Young-sang said: “By join­ing forces with Joby, a glob­al leader in this field, we expect to accel­er­ate our jour­ney towards the era of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty and lead the way on intro­duc­ing this excit­ing new tech­nol­o­gy. Col­lab­o­rat­ing with lead­ing glob­al com­pa­nies is essen­tial to secur­ing lead­er­ship in future indus­tries, which we are con­fi­dent will be dri­ven by the growth of UAM, autonomous dri­ving, and robots.”

SK Tele­com is Korea’s lead­ing ICT com­pa­ny, dri­ving inno­va­tions in fixed & wire­less telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, AI ser­vice, and dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture ser­vice. It has been pro­mot­ing the devel­op­ment of urban air mobil­i­ty by lever­ag­ing its exper­tise in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, autonomous dri­ving, pre­cise posi­tion­ing, and secu­ri­ty to become a lead­ing com­pa­ny in con­nect­ed intel­li­gence.

As a mem­ber of the ‘UAM Team Korea’, SKT is also work­ing togeth­er with oth­er major Kore­an com­pa­nies to enhance the nation’s com­pet­i­tive­ness in the field.

Both SK Tele­com and Joby intend to lever­age SK’s T Map mobil­i­ty plat­form, Korea’s largest mobil­i­ty plat­form, and UT ride-hail­ing ser­vice to pro­vide mul­ti-modal jour­neys to cus­tomers seam­less­ly inte­grat­ing both ground and air trav­el. UT was estab­lished as a joint ven­ture between SKT and Uber in 2021, bring­ing togeth­er SK’s T Map plat­form and Uber’s ride-shar­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Joby and Uber have been col­lab­o­rat­ing since 2019. 

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 FAA.

With a max­i­mum range of 150 miles (241 kilo­me­tres), a top speed of 200 mph (321 km/h), Joby says it has designed a pilot­ed air­craft to make con­ve­nient, emis­sions-free air trav­el an every­day real­i­ty.

Bevirt said: “We are thrilled to be part­ner­ing with the team at SKT who bring a wealth of rel­e­vant expe­ri­ence and tech­nol­o­gy to the table. With more than 42 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing in urban areas, South Korea offers a remark­able oppor­tu­ni­ty for Joby to make air trav­el a part of dai­ly life, help­ing peo­ple to save time while reduc­ing their car­bon foot­print.”

While Joby’s aer­i­al rideshar­ing ser­vice will be oper­at­ed direct­ly by the com­pa­ny and offered to pas­sen­gers via the Joby app or the Uber app in core U.S. mar­kets, this announce­ment reflects Joby’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.