Joby Aviation expands US Air Force’s Agility Prime program by more than $45 million

Joby Avi­a­tion has announced the expan­sion of its exist­ing con­tract with the US Air Force’s Agili­ty Prime pro­gram that increas­es the contract’s poten­tial val­ue by more than $45 mil­lion.

Build­ing on more than five years of engage­ment with defense agen­cies, the expand­ed con­tract lever­ages Joby’s years of research and tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment and will include new test­ing to eval­u­ate Joby’s advanced tech­nolo­gies, bring­ing the poten­tial val­ue of the total con­tract to more than $75 mil­lion.

The con­tract also widens the Company’s defense part­ner­ships to include the US Marine Corps, which will par­tic­i­pate in gov­ern­ment-direct­ed flight tests and use case explo­ration, includ­ing resup­ply, relo­ca­tion of per­son­nel, and emer­gency med­ical response appli­ca­tions.

Joby founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt said: “As we work toward our goal of launch­ing a pas­sen­ger rideshar­ing ser­vice, we are grate­ful for the sup­port of our defense part­ners.

“This exten­sion pro­vides valu­able sup­port for our ongo­ing devel­op­ment efforts and allows our part­ners to see first-hand the poten­tial for this air­craft in their future con­cept of oper­a­tions.”

Joby’s engage­ment with gov­ern­ment part­ners bol­sters the Company’s pri­ma­ry goal of launch­ing a com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger ser­vice by pro­vid­ing access to test­ing facil­i­ties, ear­ly oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence for gov­ern­ment cus­tomers, and a par­tial off­set to our research and devel­op­ment costs.

Ear­li­er this month, Joby attend­ed the White House Sum­mit on Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty, which con­vened indus­try, gov­ern­ment agen­cies, and mil­i­tary per­son­nel to dis­cuss how to advance US lead­er­ship in this crit­i­cal, new tech­nol­o­gy area.

With the expan­sion of Joby’s con­tract, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps have all now iden­ti­fied eVTOL air­craft as a crit­i­cal area of inter­est.

Last month, Joby Avi­a­tion announced it had for­mal­ly applied for its air­craft design to be cer­ti­fied for use in the UK, believed to be the first eVTOL com­pa­ny to apply for for­eign val­i­da­tion of its US Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) type cer­tifi­cate.

In 2020, Joby became the first eVTOL devel­op­er to receive mil­i­tary air­wor­thi­ness approval for its pre-pro­duc­tion pro­to­type air­craft. With a max­i­mum range of 150 miles, Joby’s pilot­ed, emis­sions-free air­craft can trans­port four pas­sen­gers at speeds up to 200 mph with a rev­o­lu­tion­ary qui­et acoustics pro­file.