Joby Aviation Celebrates First Flight of Turbine Electric Demonstrator Aircraft

Joby Avi­a­tion has com­plet­ed the first flight of its tur­bine elec­tric, autonomous VTOL air­craft.

The demon­stra­tor builds on Joby’s ful­ly-elec­tric air taxi plat­form and inte­grates a hybrid tur­bine pow­er­train along with the Company’s Super­Pi­lot™ auton­o­my stack to deliv­er greater range and pay­load capa­bil­i­ty.

The start of flight test­ing comes just three months after Joby announced the air­craft con­cept along­side a new part­ner­ship with L3Harris Tech­nolo­gies. The com­pa­ny plans to equip Joby’s com­mer­cial hybrid air­craft to address defense appli­ca­tions, such as con­test­ed logis­tics, “loy­al wing­man” oper­a­tions and low-alti­tude sup­port.

The U.S. gov­ern­ment has pri­or­i­tized the acqui­si­tion of resilient, autonomous and hybrid air­craft, request­ing more than $9 bil­lion in the FY26 bud­get for next-gen­er­a­tion plat­forms.

JoeBen Bevirt, CEO and Founder of Joby Avi­a­tion, said: “It’s imper­a­tive that we find ways to deliv­er new tech­nol­o­gy into the hands of Amer­i­can troops more quick­ly and cost-effi­cient­ly than we have in the past.

“Our ver­ti­cal inte­gra­tion puts us in a unique posi­tion to deliv­er on this goal, mov­ing from

con­cept to demon­stra­tion — and from demon­stra­tion to deploy­ment — at a pace that is unprece­dent­ed in today’s aero­space and defense indus­try.”

The hybrid air­craft builds on a proven all-elec­tric tech­nol­o­gy plat­form that has com­plet­ed more than 50,000 miles of flight test­ing and has entered the final stage of the FAA’s Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process for com­mer­cial air­craft.

Joby’s Super­pi­lotTM autonomous tech­nol­o­gy stack has been in devel­op­ment for more than five years and, in July, the com­pa­ny suc­cess­ful­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in REFORPAC, a land­mark Depart­ment of War exer­cise over the Pacif­ic Ocean.

Using a con­ven­tion­al Cess­na 208 air­craft, the com­pa­ny logged more than 7,000 miles of autonomous oper­a­tions across more than 40 flight hours in and around Hawaii, man­aged pri­mar­i­ly from Ander­sen Air Force Base in Guam, more than 3,000 miles away.

The air­craft com­plet­ed its first flight at Joby’s Mari­na, Cal­i­for­nia, facil­i­ty on Novem­ber 7th. It will con­tin­ue ground and flight test­ing before tak­ing part in oper­a­tional demon­stra­tions with gov­ern­ment cus­tomers, planned for 2026.

Poten­tial appli­ca­tions for Joby’s hybrid air­craft also include longer range air taxi ser­vices, as well as sales to civil­ian, com­mer­cial and defense cus­tomers.

Jason Lam­bert, Pres­i­dent, Intel­li­gence, Sur­veil­lance and Recon­nais­sance, L3Harris, said: “The future bat­tle­field relies on unmanned sys­tems aug­ment­ing manned plat­forms, and our part­ner­ship with Joby accel­er­ates mis­sion­ized VTOL air­craft to direct­ly sup­port defense require­ments. L3Harris has deliv­ered thou­sands of mis­sion­ized air­craft, and our focus is scal­ing rapid­ly to bring these com­mer­cial VTOL air­craft to the fight.”

Key Fea­tures of Joby’s Hybrid Air­craft Plat­form:

Long Range: Tur­bine-elec­tric propul­sion deliv­ers longer range as well as extend­ed hold times required for crit­i­cal mul­ti-role mis­sions, “loy­al wing­man” and con­test­ed logis­tics

Agile: Pre­cise ver­ti­cal maneu­ver­abil­i­ty allows the air­craft to deploy effec­tive­ly from rear- and for­ward-oper­at­ing loca­tions where tra­di­tion­al run­way infra­struc­ture is reg­u­lar­ly unavail­able

Autonomous: Designed to be autonomous uti­liz­ing Joby’s proven autonomous flight tech­nol­o­gy, Super­pi­lot™