BLOOMBERG: Interview with Joby Founder and CEO, JoeBen Bevirt

A Bloomberg “behind the pay­wall” inter­view was pub­lished last Thurs­day with Joby Avi­a­tion Founder and CEO, JoeBen Bevirt.

Inter­viewed by Van­dana Gom­bar, Senior Edi­tor of Glob­al Pol­i­cy at BloombergNEF, Bevirt says Joby remains on track to launch a com­mer­cial ser­vice next year with expan­sion then planned for the UAE, South Korea and Japan.

The fea­ture leads with the catchy head­line “Man­hat­tan to JFK in 7 min­utes in ‘Afford­able’ elec­tric air taxi.” It is inter­est­ing to note the term ‘Elec­tric Air Taxi’ is begin­ning to be used more with­in the media com­pared to descrip­tions like Fly­ing Taxi, eVTOL and, thank good­ness, Fly­ing Car.

Van­dana Gom­bar

Gom­bar begins the  inter­view, “Leav­ing New York often starts with the long slog out to JFK. Joby Avi­a­tion wants to change that and says it is set to launch its elec­tric air taxi ser­vice next year at a price that is com­pa­ra­ble to a con­ven­tion­al pre­mi­um cab.” She then quotes Bevirt, “A trip will be cost com­pet­i­tive with the Uber Black ser­vice ini­tial­ly and will become an increas­ing­ly more afford­able ser­vice.”

Gom­bar explains the ini­tial rides will like­ly take pas­sen­gers from the cen­tre of New York or Los Ange­les to the air­port, point­ing out that an Uber Black taxi from Mid­town Man­hat­tan to JFK costs around USD200, fol­lowed by a series of quotes from Bevirt before the main inter­view begins.

“We have had con­tin­ued sig­nif­i­cant inter­est from both strate­gic part­ners and finan­cial investors to be part of this next gen­er­a­tion of trans­porta­tion.”

“A flight in a Joby air­craft from a down­town Man­hat­tan heli­port to JFK will take approx­i­mate­ly sev­en min­utes, com­pared to around 50–75 min­utes by car.”

“Real estate is the world’s largest glob­al asset class, and it is all about loca­tion, loca­tion, loca­tion. With eVTOLs, you can move seam­less­ly from one loca­tion to anoth­er.”

“We believe the quick­est way to bring eVTOL flights to the pub­lic is with a pilot­ed air­craft, as cur­rent­ly, reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies don’t have a path to cer­ti­fy ful­ly-autonomous air­craft. How­ev­er, autonomous air­craft are a pos­si­ble evo­lu­tion.”

Gom­bar points out that Joby has raised more than USD2 bil­lion, with Toy­ota, Intel and Delta Air­lines among the key investors. At the end of this year’s Q1, Joby has USD924 mil­lion in cash and short term invest­ments.

Joby aims to man­u­fac­ture one air­craft a month by the end of 2024, ramp­ing up pro­duc­tion to reach, final­ly, more than one a day.

The main inter­view then begins.

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When do you launch a com­mer­cial ser­vice, where, and at what scale?

We have three paths to ser­vice launch: two on the com­mer­cial side and one with the US Depart­ment of Defense. On the com­mer­cial side, we have been work­ing with our part­ner Delta Air Lines to pre­pare for com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in a num­ber of their top mar­kets, includ­ing New York and LA. We’ll be work­ing with them at air­ports like JFK, LaGuardia and LAX to deliv­er a best-in-class expe­ri­ence for their cus­tomers, con­nect­ing them seam­less­ly onto Joby flights, or on to their final des­ti­na­tions.

The sec­ond path on the com­mer­cial side is in mar­kets out­side the US. For exam­ple, as part of our part­ner­ship with Dubai’s Road and Trans­port Author­i­ty, we’ve been grant­ed a six-year exclu­sive license to oper­ate air taxis in Dubai.

The third path involves our long­stand­ing part­ner­ship with the Depart­ment of Defense, which dates back to 2016. Our cur­rent and pre­vi­ous­ly com­plet­ed work with the DoD rep­re­sents a total poten­tial con­tract val­ue of USD163 mil­lion – the largest in the indus­try. We deliv­ered our first air­craft to the US Air­force last year at Edwards Air Force Base, which will be used for on-base oper­a­tions and logis­tics test­ing, with a sec­ond air­craft expect­ed to join it lat­er this year. We recent­ly com­mit­ted anoth­er two air­craft to MacDill Air Force Base.

With three of the five stages for FAA [Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion] type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion com­plete, is the most chal­leng­ing part over?

We are proud to have been the first to com­plete the first stage, the first to com­plete the sec­ond stage and now the first to com­plete the third stage [in Feb­ru­ary]. We are now focused on the fourth stage – where we com­plete thou­sands of tests on var­i­ous parts of the air­craft and the whole air­craft itself – and are pleased with the progress and momen­tum there. In addi­tion, we already have our oper­at­ing cer­tifi­cate and our repair sta­tion cer­tifi­cate, both of which are crit­i­cal to rolling out our com­mer­cial ser­vice.

When in 2025 will you be launch­ing in the US?

Our tar­get remains to launch com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger ser­vices in 2025 – we’re not putting a pre­cise date on it as much of it will depend on the reg­u­la­to­ry process, which we don’t con­trol.

The excit­ing thing about your ser­vice is the com­pet­i­tive pric­ing. Will it be equal to a shared Uber ride ulti­mate­ly?

Our tar­get is that this becomes an increas­ing­ly more afford­able ser­vice over time. Part of that pro­gres­sion is being cost com­pet­i­tive with Uber Black ini­tial­ly and mov­ing down and becom­ing com­pet­i­tive with oth­er taxi ser­vices. We will get you to your des­ti­na­tion sig­nif­i­cant­ly faster at a com­pet­i­tive price point. There are mul­ti­ple ele­ments that make it pos­si­ble. When you are mov­ing on the ground, you are con­strained by 2D [two-dimen­sion­al] infra­struc­ture that results in routes that are less direct. The aver­age speed of ground trans­porta­tion tends to be 20 miles an hour. You can move in the air at 200 miles an hour. Both the air­craft and pilot are able to deliv­er more pas­sen­ger miles in a giv­en amount of time. That is the met­ric that mat­ters for us – how many pas­sen­ger miles can we deliv­er each hour. The more pas­sen­ger miles we are able to deliv­er, the more cost effec­tive­ly we are able to deliv­er them.

When do you plan to reach 100 air­craft per year man­u­fac­tur­ing capac­i­ty?

We began fly­ing the first pro­to­type in full scale in 2017, with the first pro­duc­tion ver­sion of that air­craft com­ing off our man­u­fac­tur­ing line about a year ago. We are ramp­ing up the line with the goal of reach­ing one air­craft a month by the end of the year.

We also have a pro­duc­tion line in Day­ton, Ohio with the goal of being able to pro­duce up to 500 air­craft a year over time.

We are in the ear­ly stages of our pro­gres­sion – mov­ing from pilot man­u­fac­tur­ing to phase 1 man­u­fac­tur­ing where we are able to build hun­dreds of air­craft per year. We look at this being anal­o­gous to the ear­ly days of the auto­mo­tive indus­try. Auto­mo­biles went from being hand-built – 1 or 10 of a giv­en mod­el per year – to hun­dreds per year, and then thou­sands. Today we build near­ly 100 mil­lion auto­mo­biles per year world­wide. eVTOLs will see pro­gres­sive scal­ing as well, and that is one of the rea­sons you are see­ing the world’s lead­ing auto­mo­bile com­pa­nies lean­ing into this sec­tor. As you know, Toy­ota is one of our largest investors, and it has been incred­i­ble to have Toy­ota engi­neers work­ing shoul­der to shoul­der with the Joby team since 2019.

We will take a mea­sured approach to ramp­ing pro­duc­tion, as we dial in our process­es here in Cal­i­for­nia first and then expand to grow pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty in Ohio.

What are the pros and cons of a man­u­fac­tur­ing plus ser­vice mod­el?

Our ver­ti­cal inte­gra­tion, from the com­po­nent to the air­craft lev­el, sup­ports build­ing a plat­form from which we can adapt our air­craft to new tech­nolo­gies. For exam­ple, as bat­tery tech­nolo­gies improve, we can upgrade our bat­tery packs, which are designed and assem­bled in-house.

In a mar­ket that is nascent, this mod­el gives us a clear advan­tage in terms of both inno­v­a­tive devel­op­ment, rapid feed­back loops and speed to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Also, by run­ning the ser­vice, we are in the driver’s seat to build out a net­work rather than rely­ing on some­body else to do it. It does take more invest­ment in machin­ery, and more peo­ple on staff, but those ear­ly invest­ments are incred­i­bly valu­able in the long term to the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, to the suc­cess of the air­craft, and even­tu­al­ly to our share­hold­ers too.

What is the invest­ment required to build a ver­ti­port for an eVTOL?

It will vary based on loca­tion and size. We expect to com­mence pas­sen­ger ser­vice by util­is­ing exist­ing infra­struc­ture, such as gen­er­al avi­a­tion air­ports, and heli­pads, of which there are over 5,000 in the US. The Down­town Man­hat­tan Heli­port, where we flew as part of an exhi­bi­tion flight last year, is a great exam­ple of a site that’s already prepar­ing for air taxi oper­a­tions, hav­ing issued an RFP for elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of the site.

Does a new taxi ser­vice like yours require spe­cial insur­ance cov­er? Would the pas­sen­gers need any addi­tion­al insur­ance?

Today, we have insur­ance cov­er­age for all of our oper­a­tions, includ­ing flight test­ing of our pro­to­type air­craft. These air­craft oper­ate just like oth­er air­craft oper­ate today. Avi­a­tion is not only the fastest mode of trans­porta­tion, it is also the low­est cost and the safest.

When do you see the need for addi­tion­al fund­ing, and what will be the route to mobi­lize that?

We have raised more than USD2 bil­lion to date, and we have had con­tin­ued sig­nif­i­cant inter­est from both strate­gic part­ners and finan­cial investors to be part of this next gen­er­a­tion of trans­porta­tion. We’re grate­ful to have part­ners like Toy­ota, which is not only our man­u­fac­tur­ing part­ner but our largest exter­nal share­hold­er, and sup­port from Bail­lie Gif­ford, a long-term investor in Joby since 2020. As we expand the busi­ness, there may be oppor­tu­ni­ties to bring in addi­tion­al part­ners. We see sig­nif­i­cant inter­est from the auto­mo­tive side, from the avi­a­tion side and also from the real estate side. Real estate is the world’s largest glob­al asset class, and it is all about loca­tion, loca­tion loca­tion. With eVTOLs, all of a sud­den, you can move seam­less­ly from one loca­tion to anoth­er. I think we are going to see inter­est from real estate oper­a­tors accel­er­ate over the next few years.

How is air­craft charg­ing dif­fer­ent from elec­tric car charg­ing? Are there many adher­ents to Joby’s elec­tric avi­a­tion charg­ing stan­dards?

Our bat­ter­ies get cycled much more fre­quent­ly. An elec­tric car bat­tery might get recharged once per day while our bat­ter­ies are get­ting recharged dozens of times per day. That means the bat­tery, and the way you treat the bat­tery, is essen­tial to the oper­at­ing eco­nom­ics, which is crit­i­cal to the cus­tomer, and the envi­ron­men­tal impact, which is real­ly impor­tant to me.

We have designed the air­craft in a way that we treat the bat­tery well, and we have designed the charg­ing sys­tem and the inte­grat­ed cool­ing that is part of the GEACS [Glob­al Elec­tric Avi­a­tion Charg­ing Sys­tem] stan­dard to ensure a very long cycle life of the bat­tery. In the lab, we have demon­strat­ed that we can charge and dis­charge more than 10,000 times on a rep­re­sen­ta­tive 25-mile flight and still have a bat­tery with good per­for­mance. That is essen­tial to the oper­at­ing eco­nom­ics and for a low cli­mate impact.

Ide­al­ly our tar­get is to have low­er grams of CO2 equiv­a­lent per pas­sen­ger kilo­me­ter (or mile) – on a life cycle basis – than rid­ing an elec­tric car on the ground, and yet you are able to get to your des­ti­na­tion more than five times faster.

We put a lot of ener­gy into build­ing what we believe is a real­ly remark­able charg­ing sys­tem. One of the chal­lenges – if you don’t have the ther­mal man­age­ment sys­tem right – is you are not able to charge the bat­tery fast enough, and then the amount you charge cus­tomers is not suf­fi­cient­ly com­pelling. For a 25-mile flight, we expect to recharge the air­craft in the time it will take to offload and reload pas­sen­gers.

We’re active­ly shar­ing the charg­ing stan­dard we’ve devel­oped with our indus­try to help dri­ve adop­tion – we believe the abil­i­ty to charge rapid­ly is going to be crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant to the suc­cess of the ser­vice we’re design­ing.

What led you to imag­ine and build an air taxi?

I am an envi­ron­men­tal­ist, an engi­neer, and pas­sion­ate about sus­tain­abil­i­ty. I have been dream­ing about build­ing a new mode of trans­porta­tion for more than four decades, ever since I was a young boy walk­ing home from school in the red­woods of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. I dreamed of some­thing that didn’t exist yet: a fly­ing mode of trans­port that’s clean, qui­et, acces­si­ble, and that you can take your fam­i­ly or friends on. Elec­tric propul­sion has been the crit­i­cal unlock.

Between NYC, LA, Dubai and DoD — what is the biggest rev­enue oppor­tu­ni­ty?

They are all great oppor­tu­ni­ties. We expect them all to be very sig­nif­i­cant, and pos­si­bly for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. Dubai, for exam­ple, attracts more than 10 mil­lion tourists per year. And oth­er cities in the UAE are with­in ranges sup­port­ed by a high-per­for­mance eVTOL air­craft.

What does the next pipeline of oppor­tu­ni­ties look like?

This is a glob­al­ly rel­e­vant tech­nol­o­gy that has a sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness case, and we see great oppor­tu­ni­ties to bring it to mar­ket. We’re pur­su­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion val­i­da­tion in the UK, Japan and South Korea, and we have part­ners such as ANA Hold­ings in Japan and SK Tele­com in Korea to explore ser­vice. By 2030, we expect our ser­vice in cities around the world. We have not made spe­cif­ic pro­jec­tions.

What is the next stage of the eVTOLs evo­lu­tion? Autonomous eVTOLS?

We believe the quick­est way to bring eVTOL flight to the pub­lic is with a pilot­ed air­craft, as cur­rent­ly, reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies don’t have a path to cer­ti­fy ful­ly-autonomous air­craft. How­ev­er, autonomous air­craft are a pos­si­ble evo­lu­tion of our air­craft, and when there is reg­u­la­to­ry struc­ture to cer­ti­fy them, I believe you will see autonomous air­craft in the mar­ket.

(The total orders for eVTOLs glob­al­ly are present­ly close to 11,000 units)

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.jobyaviation.com/

(News Source: www.bloomberg.com)

(Images: Joby Avi­a­tion)

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