Interview with Founder and CEO of Joby Aviation, JoeBen Bevirt: Says “Electric Air Taxis Will Be in Service by 2025”

The Asso­ci­at­ed Press inter­viewed JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and CEO of Joby Avi­a­tion, this week. Jour­nal­ist, David Koenig, writes at the begin­ning, “The notion that hun­dreds or even thou­sands of elec­tric-pow­ered air taxis could be whisk­ing peo­ple over jammed roads is inch­ing away from sci­ence fic­tion and clos­er to real­i­ty.”

He con­tin­ues, “JoeBen Bevirt is an evan­ge­list for the new indus­try. His com­pa­ny Joby Avi­a­tion deliv­ered its first eVTOL to the Air Force last month. Bevirt insists that his San­ta Cruz, Cal­i­­for­­nia-based com­pa­ny, whose largest share­hold­er is Toy­ota (11 per­cent), can meet an ambi­tious tar­get of enter­ing com­mer­cial air taxi ser­vice in 2025.”

Bevirt believes the cost of a Joby air taxi ride could be less than USD5 a mile or no-more than USD25 over a five mile jour­ney dur­ing the eVTOL’s launch peri­od.

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Why eVTOLs? We’ve already got heli­copters.

This has been my dream since I was a lit­tle boy. I want­ed a bet­ter way for peo­ple to be able to get from A to B. In col­lege (in 1993 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis) I became con­vinced that elec­tric propul­sion was the way to make these air­craft suf­fi­cient­ly qui­et, but at that point bat­ter­ies didn’t have the spe­cif­ic ener­gy we need­ed. I came back to it 15 years ago and found­ed Joby Avi­a­tion once bat­ter­ies had matured.

You found­ed Joby in 2009. What were your goals?

The first was to build an air­craft that was dra­mat­i­cal­ly safer, was dra­mat­i­cal­ly qui­eter, and that had oper­at­ing eco­nom­ics that would make this a viable dai­ly mode of trans­porta­tion. And we’re very, very pleased with the progress we’ve made on deliv­er­ing on those met­rics.

Are peo­ple even­tu­al­ly going to own these and park them at their home?

I would like to see this be a mode of trans­porta­tion that’s acces­si­ble for peo­ple to use for a large per­cent­age of the trips that they take. The pro­gres­sion from some­thing that you’re using occa­sion­al­ly — like you would use a taxi — to some­thing that’s more and more reg­u­lar, we’ll see how long that takes. I actu­al­ly think it’s bet­ter to have a shared mod­el where you’re able to increase uti­liza­tion. And you don’t have a cap­i­tal asset that’s tied up for just a sin­gle user.

(Image Cred­it: Joby)

So con­sumers aren’t going to be respon­si­ble for main­tain­ing an air­craft?

That’s one of the beau­ti­ful things about the air taxi mod­el. You can think about it sim­i­lar­ly to when you hail a taxi or an Uber. Your goal is to get from A to B. As the oper­a­tor, Joby’s role is to get you there as quick­ly and con­ve­nient­ly as pos­si­ble.

You plan to start with ded­i­cat­ed land­ing areas. Could these even­tu­al­ly take off and land in neigh­bour­hoods?

This is some­thing we’ve worked on and has been a pas­sion of mine since the very found­ing of the com­pa­ny — mak­ing an air­craft which is qui­et enough to fit in the places where peo­ple want to go, some­thing that sounds more like a whoosh that blends in the back­ground than the whop-whop of a heli­copter or the high-pitched whine that peo­ple asso­ciate with a drone or a small air­plane. At 1,000 feet it is less than 45 deci­bels, so it’s below the back­ground noise lev­el of most cities.

When these go into ser­vice, how much is a ride going to cost?

Mov­ing from maybe a lit­tle north of USD5 a mile down below USD5 a mile over the launch peri­od.

How is that pos­si­ble, and don’t eVTOLs have to get big­ger to bring down the per-pas­sen­ger cost?

It real­ly comes down to util­i­sa­tion. The more of the seats that you’re sell­ing, the low­er the cost per pas­sen­ger, and the more hours per day the air­craft is fly­ing, the low­er the cost per pas­sen­ger. (That will require mak­ing) the take­off and land­ing loca­tions and the over­all expe­ri­ence com­pelling enough that we’re see­ing a sig­nif­i­cant vol­ume of peo­ple using it many hours per day.

You deliv­ered your first air­craft to Air Force. What will you learn from how the Air Force uses it?

The first piece is on pilot train­ing. We’re going to need to bring on large num­bers of pilots, so build­ing up that capa­bil­i­ty and those process­es are real­ly valu­able. The next piece that we’ve also accom­plished is build­ing the infra­struc­ture. And then the next piece is on the oper­a­tions and build­ing up the cadence, just get­ting good at oper­at­ing the air­craft on a reg­u­lar basis.

Will this help with your effort to get Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for com­mer­cial use?

There will cer­tain­ly be valu­able learn­ings and the oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence, the feed­back from the Air Force pilots to the FAA flight-test pilots.

New Facil­i­ty at Day­ton, Ohio (Cred­it: Joby)

You’re in the third of five phas­es of FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. How is that going?

We have sub­mit­ted all of our area-spe­cif­ic cer­ti­fi­ca­tion plans on stage three, and the FAA is mak­ing fan­tas­tic progress on approv­ing those. Once those get approved it unlocks a big chunk of work that we’re able to sub­mit to the FAA in prepa­ra­tion for stage four.

What is the biggest hur­dle you face to get­ting cer­ti­fi­ca­tion?

The big hur­dle that lies between here and the fin­ish line is a moun­tain of work of test­ing every sin­gle com­po­nent and sys­tem for cred­it, whether that’s envi­ron­men­tal test­ing or struc­tur­al test­ing. We’re mak­ing fan­tas­tic progress on it. We’re knock­ing them down one by one, but there is lots and lots of work to do.

Can you get ful­ly cer­ti­fied and launch com­mer­cial ser­vice in 2025?

Our goal is absolute­ly still to achieve com­mer­cial ser­vice in 2025, and giv­en the progress we’re mak­ing on cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and the progress we’re mak­ing on the man­u­fac­tur­ing front, we’re excit­ed to just be day after day knock­ing down the mile­stones.

So you’re say­ing some­time in 2025 is still doable?

For our com­mer­cial ser­vice? Yes.

Last year one of your (pilot­less) pro­to­type air­craft crashed in Cal­i­for­nia. Has that changed any­thing in your design?

That is still in an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion with the NTSB (Nation­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Board), and so I can’t com­ment on it, but I can say that we are extreme­ly con­fi­dent in the design of our air­craft.

Joby announced in Sep­tem­ber that you’re going to build a USD500 mil­lion pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in Day­ton, Ohio, with up to USD325 mil­lion in state and local incen­tives. Why there?

It’s real­ly excit­ing, the birth­place of avi­a­tion. Day­ton specif­i­cal­ly is where the Wright broth­ers got going, and it has an incred­i­ble avi­a­tion her­itage. You’ve got Wright-Pat­ter­son Air Force Base, which is the home of the Air Force Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry and AFWERX (the Air Force’s tech­nol­o­gy-inno­va­tion pro­gram). Ohio is the largest sup­pli­er of parts for Boe­ing and Air­bus, so there’s a deep man­u­fac­tur­ing bench there.

You’ve been involved with a series of tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies. Any plans beyond Joby?

I’m very pas­sion­ate about sus­tain­able avi­a­tion and am very excit­ed about what elec­tric … propul­sion can mean for avi­a­tion sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.jobyaviation.com

(News Source: https://apnews.com)

(Top image: JoeBen Bevirt — Cred­it: Joby)