Joby Aviation announces infrastructure partnership to develop landing sites for its eVTOL ridesharing service

Joby Avi­a­tion has part­nered with REEF Tech­nol­o­gy and Neigh­bor­hood Prop­er­ty Group (NPG) to devel­op take-off and land­ing sites for its aer­i­al rideshar­ing ser­vice, which plans to launch in 2024.

Through the part­ner­ship, Joby will gain access to a range of rooftop loca­tions across all key met­ro­pol­i­tan areas in the USA, as well as a mech­a­nism to fund the acqui­si­tion and devel­op­ment of new sky­port sites. The com­pa­nies will focus ini­tial­ly on Los Ange­les, Mia­mi, New York and the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area.

JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO at Joby Avi­a­tion, said: “This is a land­mark deal on Joby’s path to build­ing a trans­for­ma­tion­al rideshar­ing ser­vice in our skies. NPG and REEF have an unbeat­able net­work of sites across the US and we’re excit­ed to be work­ing with them to iden­ti­fy sites that will become the back­bone of our future ser­vice.

“Park­ing struc­tures are ide­al loca­tions for us as they allow us to deliv­er our cus­tomers as close to their des­ti­na­tion as pos­si­ble, while min­i­miz­ing any local impact and reduc­ing the need for build­ing new infra­struc­ture.”

REEF’s assets include more than 5,000 sites across North Amer­i­ca and Europe and reach more than 70 per cent of the Amer­i­can pub­lic. NPG is a real estate acqui­si­tion com­pa­ny affil­i­at­ed with REEF for the tar­get­ed acqui­si­tion of mobil­i­ty hubs across the Unit­ed States.

Joby will also enjoy a peri­od of exclu­siv­i­ty dur­ing which it can secure long-term rooftop leas­es on sky­port sites with­in NPG and REEF’s net­work of park­ing garages.

Park­ing garages are par­tic­u­lar­ly well-suit­ed to host­ing sky­ports, as they:

• Are typ­i­cal­ly locat­ed near pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tions
• Have ade­quate space to host cus­tomers, flight oper­a­tions, and air­craft charg­ing
• Do not require struc­tur­al rein­force­ment to sup­port air taxi ser­vices
• Pro­vide obstruc­tion-free approach and depar­ture paths that min­i­mize noise to the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ty 
• Are nat­u­ral­ly suit­ed to becom­ing mobil­i­ty hubs, sup­port­ing seam­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty to micro­mo­bil­i­ty, pub­lic tran­sit, park­ing, and rideshar­ing

In addi­tion to work­ing with NPG and REEF to iden­ti­fy park­ing struc­ture loca­tions, Joby’s aer­i­al rideshar­ing net­work will tap into more than 5,000 exist­ing heli­ports and region­al air­ports across the USA.

Philippe Saint-Just, co-founder of REEF, said: “With our focus on trans­form­ing urban spaces into com­mu­ni­ty hubs that enable the future of mobil­i­ty, aer­i­al rideshar­ing is a com­pelling oppor­tu­ni­ty for us to decar­bonise trav­el and make bet­ter use of struc­tures such as park­ing garages. 

“We’re thrilled to work with Joby to bring this trans­for­ma­tion­al elec­tric aer­i­al mobil­i­ty to life, and to help real­ize its poten­tial for cities and their neigh­bor­hoods.”

Joby’s eVTOL air­craft, which has a max­i­mum range of 150 miles and can trav­el at speeds of 200 miles an hour, intends to offer a pas­sen­ger ser­vice acces­si­ble via an app. It is expect­ed to be more than 100 times qui­eter than a con­ven­tion­al heli­copter.

The com­pa­ny acquired Uber Ele­vate in Decem­ber 2020, inte­grat­ing the team’s data, mod­el­ing and insight into site selec­tion. Both also agreed to inte­grate their ser­vices into each oth­er’s apps.

And in Feb­ru­ary 2021, Joby announced a joint SPAC merg­er with Rein­vent Tech­nol­o­gy Part­ners to go pub­lic in a deal which val­ued the com­pa­ny at $6.6 bil­lion.