The notion that hundreds or even thousands of electric-powered air taxis could be whisking people over jammed roads is inching away from science fiction and closer to reality.
Battery technology is improving enough for eVTOLs—short for electric vertical takeoffs and landings, the name given to these aircraft that can act like helicopters near the ground but fly like small planes. The bigger question may be whether there is a profitable business in producing them.
JoeBen Bevirt is an evangelist for the new industry and the founder and CEO of Joby Aviation Inc., which delivered its first eVTOL to the Air Force last month. Bevirt insists that his Santa Cruz, California-based company, whose largest shareholder is Toyota (11%), can meet an ambitious target of entering commercial air taxi service in 2025.
Like other eVTOL startups, Joby is losing money—more than $400 million in 2021-2022. Analysts don't know when, if ever, it will be profitable.
Bevirt spoke to The Associated Press. His comments have been edited for length and clarity.
Q. Why eVTOLs? We've already got helicopters.
A. This has been my dream since I was a little boy. I wanted a better way for people to be able to get from A to B. In college (in 1993 at the University of California, Davis) I became convinced that electric propulsion was the way to make these aircraft sufficiently quiet, but at that point batteries didn't have the specific energy we needed. I came back to it 15 years ago and founded Joby Aviation once batteries had matured.
Q. You founded Joby in 2009. What were your goals?
A. The first was to build an aircraft that was dramatically safer, was dramatically quieter, and that had operating economics that would make this a viable daily mode of transportation. And we're very, very pleased with the progress we've made on delivering on those metrics.
Q. Are people eventually going to own these and park them at their home?
A. I would like to see this be a mode of transportation that's accessible for people to use for a large percentage of the trips that they take. The progression from something that you're using occasionally—like you would use a taxi—to something that's more and more regular, we'll see how long that takes. I actually think it's better to have a shared model where you're able to increase utilization. And you don't have a capital asset that's tied up for just a single user.