Toyota invests additional $500 million to support certification and commercial production of Joby’s electric air taxi

Toy­ota Motor Cor­po­ra­tion will invest an addi­tion­al $500 mil­lion to sup­port the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion of Joby Avi­a­tion’s elec­tric air taxi, with the aim of real­is­ing the two com­pa­nies’ shared vision of air mobil­i­ty.

The invest­ment will be made in two equal tranch­es and brings Toy­ota Motor Cor­po­ra­tion’s total invest­ment in Joby to $894 mil­lion. It will be made in the form of cash for com­mon stock, with the first tranche tar­get­ed to close lat­er this year and the sec­ond in 2025.

JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO, Joby Avi­a­tion, said: “Today’s invest­ment builds on near­ly sev­en years of col­lab­o­ra­tion between our com­pa­nies. The knowl­edge and sup­port shared by Toy­ota have been instru­men­tal in Joby’s suc­cess and we look for­ward to deep­en­ing our rela­tion­ship as we deliv­er on our shared vision for the future of air trav­el.”

Toy­ota’s rela­tion­ship with Joby began through an ini­tial invest­ment made by Toy­ota Ven­tures, the ear­ly-stage ven­ture cap­i­tal arm of Toy­ota that explores and iden­ti­fies dis­rup­tive tech­nolo­gies and com­pa­nies for invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties and pro­vides sup­port for port­fo­lio com­pa­nies. Toy­ota Motor Cor­po­ra­tion sub­se­quent­ly com­plet­ed invest­ments total­ing $394 mil­lion. 

Since 2019, in addi­tion to mon­e­tary invest­ments, Toy­ota has been invest­ing time and human resources to share its knowl­edge of the Toy­ota Pro­duc­tion Sys­tem via process plan­ning, man­u­fac­tur­ing method devel­op­ment, and tool­ing design.

Toy­ota engi­neers now work side-by-side with the Joby team in Cal­i­for­nia, and, in 2023, the two com­pa­nies signed a long-term agree­ment for Toy­ota to sup­ply key pow­er­train and actu­a­tion com­po­nents for the pro­duc­tion of Joby’s air­craft.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Toy­ota’s addi­tion­al invest­ment reflects the con­tin­ued aim of Toy­ota Motor Cor­po­ra­tion’s found­ing fam­i­ly, start­ing with Kiichi­ro Toy­o­da down to present-day Chair­man Akio Toy­o­da, to real­ize the dream of air mobil­i­ty for per­son­al or dai­ly trav­el as part of its trans­for­ma­tion into a mobil­i­ty com­pa­ny. 

Tet­suo “Ted” Ogawa, who signed the agree­ment as the Oper­at­ing Offi­cer on behalf of Toy­ota Motor Cor­po­ra­tion, said: “With this addi­tion­al invest­ment, we are excit­ed to see Joby cer­ti­fy their air­craft and shift to com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion. We share Joby’s view that sus­tain­able flight will be cen­tral to alle­vi­at­ing today’s per­sis­tent mobil­i­ty chal­lenges.”

Joby con­tin­ues to make impor­tant progress towards com­mer­cial­iza­tion, recent­ly rolling its third air­craft off its pilot pro­duc­tion line in Mari­na, Cal­i­for­nia, and break­ing ground on an expand­ed facil­i­ty in Cal­i­for­nia that will more than dou­ble the Com­pa­ny’s man­u­fac­tur­ing foot­print.

In August 2024, it con­firmed that the fourth of five stages of the type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process is now more than one-third com­plete on the Joby side.