A front-runner in the race to launch air taxi service in American cities is buying up more space, most recently in a symbolic area: a manufacturing facility near where the Wright brothers built the first powered airplane.
Joby Aviation said the $61.5 million purchase by the Santa Cruz, California-based air taxi maker of a 728,000-square-foot industrial property in Vandalia, Ohio, this month from Houston-based Capstone STS is major step toward a significant event for the company. It seeks to double its production of electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOLs, in 2027 to produce four aircraft daily.
The purchases by Joby and its competitors — including Archer Aviation and Boeing-owned Wisk Aero — across the country are part of an effort to bring commercial air taxi service to market in the next few years.
Joby's latest deal came about a month after it agreed with Los Angeles-based parking technology startup Metropolis Technologies to repurpose 25 parking lots across the country into vertiports, or stations where eVTOLs can land, recharge and take off.
It also follows a deal late last year when Archer Aviation paid $126 million to buy an airport in the Los Angeles area to serve as a takeoff, landing and testing hub for Archer's planned air taxi network. Other players including VertiPorts by Atlantic and Skyports are leasing rooftops and small parcels for future air taxi landing sites.
Air taxi makers like Joby have scaled manufacturing in recent months, bolstering production facilities to gain an edge over competitors. Companies are also racing for certification from the Federal Aviation Administration, which they need to begin flying their futuristic aircraft commercially.
Joby plans to launch its first air taxi service this year in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The company's founder and CEO, JoeBen Bevirt, has previously heralded its coming air taxis as part of “the next golden age of aviation,” one that will “redefine how people travel across the world.”
Still, Joby Aviation and competitors are still seeking FAA approvals to operate their air taxis commercially — and, as such, are in pre-revenue stages.
Deepening Ohio ties
The new Ohio plant is Joby's second manufacturing operation in the area, which has a more than century-long history as an aerospace innovation hub. A cow pasture outside Dayton called Huffman Prairie was where Orville and Wilbur Wright piloted the world’s first practical fixed-wing aircraft in the early 1900s; the city is home to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Joby announced late last year that it had begun making propeller blades in a facility just outside the Dayton airport, citing Ohio’s deep bench of skilled aviation talent and close proximity to critical suppliers.
Over the summer, the company put the final touches on its primary manufacturing facility in Marina, on California’s Central Coast, expanding the 435,000-square-foot facility to support ramped-up production capacity.
At this flight test facility and elsewhere, the company is training the first generation of commercially certified eVTOL pilots. It is using AI flight simulators and some of the same technology used in such video games as Fortnite to create 3D buildings to help prepare for planned operations in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco, with additional cities on the horizon.
The air taxi startup launched back in 2009 with a handful of engineers working out of a rustic workshop amid the redwood trees in the mountains above Santa Cruz. Joby is now a publicly traded company that’s considered a front-runner in the burgeoning air taxi field, with some $1 billion in investments, including $750 million in backing from Toyota and partnerships with Uber and Delta Air Lines.
The company has stressed its ties to the federal government and the current administration’s efforts to revitalize the commercial and defense aerospace industries on U.S. soil. In September, Joby announced plans to participate in the government’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, an initiative led by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the FAA that aims to accelerate the “safe commercialization” of air taxis and other so-called advanced air mobility services.
“The reindustrialization of Ohio has become central to Joby’s story, and with unmatched governmental and policy support, we’re ready to make sure that the commercial and defense aircraft that define the future of flight are built right here in America,” Bevirt said in a statement.
Emerging industry
In a statement, an array of Ohio officials celebrated Joby’s arrival as a perfect match for the region's wealth of advanced manufacturing talent. The firm plans to produce some 500 air taxis per year at its Ohio plant, creating some 2,000 jobs in the region.
Gov. Mike DeWine said in a statement that Joby's new plant would bring "thousands of good-paying blue collar jobs back to Ohio." He called it "an incredible testament to Ohio’s long history as a leader in aviation and to the manufacturing renaissance happening all across the states.”
The flying taxi industry is racing to build prototypes aimed at short-distance urban trips, freeing drivers from traffic congestion and getting them places faster.
Joby has designed its air taxis to generate about 1% of the noise of a helicopter, while Archer's four-seat Midnight is designed to fly up to 150 mph and land without being much louder than a vacuum cleaner.
Ultimately, a gridlock-free ride in a Joby air taxi could cost about the same on a per-seat basis as taking an Uber Black, the ride-hailing firm's premium ride service.
"You could click a button and get a flight," said Joby spokesperson Charles Stewart. "It's not going to happen overnight, it takes time to scale manufacturing, but there is a fairly bold vision to make this accessible to a lot of people."