Joby Aviation adds second pre-production prototype eVTOL aircraft to help accelerate flight testing in 2022

Joby Avi­a­tion has con­firmed it received FAA Spe­cial Air­wor­thi­ness Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and US Air Force Air­wor­thi­ness Approval for a sec­ond pre-pro­duc­tion pro­to­type air­craft last month, as expect­ed.

The first pre-pro­duc­tion pro­to­type gen­er­at­ed 65 ter­abytes of test data in 2021, fly­ing more than 5,300 miles — includ­ing what is believed to be the longest flight of an eVTOL air­craft to date — at 154.6 miles on a sin­gle charge. 

As planned, the sec­ond air­craft will sig­nif­i­cant­ly accel­er­ate Joby’s capac­i­ty for flight test­ing in 2022, fur­ther sup­port­ing the Company’s ambi­tion to cer­ti­fy its air­craft with the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion in time to launch com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in 2024. The air­craft is expect­ed to begin fly­ing lat­er this month and will be put into ser­vice as part of Joby’s Agili­ty Prime con­tract with the US Air Force.

Com­ment­ing on the mile­stone, JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO of Joby, said: “Our 2021 flight test pro­gramme deliv­ered a wealth of infor­ma­tion and expe­ri­ence to sup­port our pro­gramme. With two air­craft fly­ing at the same time, we’ll be able to increase the speed of our learn­ings as planned, while con­tin­u­ing to ful­fil the require­ments of our Agili­ty Prime con­tract.

“We’re grate­ful to the US Air Force for our ongo­ing rela­tion­ship and sup­port and to the FAA for con­tin­u­ing to fos­ter inno­va­tion in the avi­a­tion indus­try.”

US Air Force air­wor­thi­ness was received just six days after the FAA spe­cial air­wor­thi­ness cer­ti­fi­ca­tion was grant­ed. This approval time­line reflects joint work between Joby and the US Air Force to stream­line cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments and demon­strates their com­mit­ment to intro­duce nov­el avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies to the com­mer­cial mar­ket.

With a max­i­mum range of 150 miles and a top speed of 200 mph, Joby’s all-elec­tric air­craft is designed to car­ry four pas­sen­gers and a pilot with zero oper­at­ing emis­sions. The com­pa­ny began fly­ing full-scale pro­to­types in 2017 and has com­plet­ed more than 1,000 flight tests to date. Joby aims to launch pas­sen­ger ser­vices in 2024, offer­ing a fast, clean, and qui­et way for peo­ple to move with­in con­gest­ed met­ro­pol­i­tan areas and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties.

In 2020, Joby became the first and only eVTOL com­pa­ny to sign a G‑1 (stage 4) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion basis with the FAA, hav­ing received an ini­tial (stage 2) signed G‑1 from the FAA in 2019. In par­al­lel to this work, the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to make progress with the FAA on defin­ing the means of com­pli­ance that will apply to its air­craft as it pro­gress­es with cer­ti­fi­ca­tion efforts.

Joby list­ed on the New York Stock Exchange in August 2021, under the tick­er sym­bol ‘JOBY’.