To see the cutting edge of 21st-century transportation, look no further than a sleepy little airfield on a flat stretch of farmland and warehouses in Central California. The bucolic site has become a research and testing ground for a new generation of air taxis and flying cars.
Joby Aviation is the latest aeronautical aviation firm to take up residence near the Hollister Municipal Airport in San Benito County. The property about an hour’s drive south of Silicon Valley has evolved from “a little airport surrounded by a lettuce field” into a nascent breeding ground for vehicles that aim to reimagine how people get from Point A to Point B, according to Ken Lindsay, the developer of the warehouse that's now home to Joby.
The Santa Cruz-based maker of eVTOLs, or electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, paid $15 million for the 47,500-square-foot vacant warehouse near the airport. The company is one of a handful of aviation pioneers working to develop air taxis they hope will soon whisk people across urban neighborhoods in the manner of airborne Ubers.
California’s Central Coast, with its consistently sunny, clear weather and high concentration of small, uncongested airports surrounded by relatively unpopulated open land, has become a hot spot for eVTOL testing and other uses in recent years. Joby, for its part, runs its primary manufacturing facility in nearby Marina, in Monterey County.
Cities such as Hollister, a rural farming town in San Benito County that’s historically grown apricots and grapes, have welcomed the economic activity. Hollister is a city of less than 45,000 people that's mainly known for its annual motorcycle rally on Fourth of July weekend.
Late last year, a coalition of leaders dubbed the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership won a $7.4 million state grant to invest in upgrading the infrastructure at airports in Watsonville, Marina, Salinas and Hollister to help make them more attractive to next-generation aviation startups.
Real estate potential
Lindsay, an amateur pilot and architect who lives in the Monterey area, has been working for years to promote the Hollister airport and the surrounding area as a business park for owners and clients who might want to park their private jets out back, so to speak.
Today, the approximately 100-acre Air Park Business Center is a testing hub for high-tech aerospace firms including Joby competitor Wisk Aero, aerospace startup ZeroAvia and flying car startup Alef Aeronautics.
Lindsay, after going into real estate development in and around Silicon Valley some 40 years ago, "would fly over this airport all the time, and I’d look down and think, ‘Wow, this has a lot of potential.’”
The Hollister warehouse purchase expands Joby's network of facilities on California’s Central Coast; it has manufacturing and flight test operations in Marina and San Carlos.
The company plans to use the new industrial facility in Hollister to “support Joby’s flight-testing operations,” a spokesperson said in an email to CoStar News. She called the testing “a critical phase in the aircraft certification process that allows FAA pilots to evaluate the aircrafts’ performance.”
Next-generation users
Lindsay gradually "chipped away" at his vision of building on the property, building the warehouse at 1891 Airway Drive in 2003 with the help of a $1.4 million construction loan, according to financial records. There were delays and red tape in necessary tasks such as extending the runway and expanding other airport infrastructure, Lindsay said. He added that deals fell through during economic dips connected to the dot-com bust and later the financial crisis of 2008.
But in the past few years, the airport and its surrounding properties have drawn a surge of interest from aeronautics tech pioneers.
Wisk Aero, owned by Boeing, has operated a research-and-development and flight test facility near the Hollister airport since 2016, when its predecessor, Zee.Aero, signed a 34-year ground lease for a 14,000-square-foot hangar, city records show.
The Silicon Valley company has since expanded the space to include offices and parking. Wisk this month completed the first flight of its second Generation 6 aircraft at its Hollister test facility. It is working with the Texas Department of Transportation under a Federal Aviation Administration-backed advanced air mobility pilot program aimed at integrating next-generation aircraft into U.S. airspace.
ZeroAvia, a Silicon Valley aerospace startup that’s developing hydrogen-electric engines for airplanes with the goal of enabling environmentally friendly, zero-emission flight, leased a 15,000-square-foot flex facility at Lindsay’s Airpark Business Center in 2022.
The master-planned industrial development consists of about 15 parcels with direct airport access that companies can lease or buy, Lindsay said. Six lots remain available for sale or lease.
Late last year, San Mateo-based flying car startup Alef Aeronautics petitioned officials in Hollister for permission to open a testing facility at the airport. Alef said in a statement in August that it would begin testing its futuristic flying cars, designed to levitate vertically, above traffic, at the airport in Hollister as well as in Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco.
Alef said it planned to test its all-black, Batman-esque Model Zero Ultralight that it calls “the first flying car in history,” on driving, vertical takeoff, forward flight and vertical landing. Alef wants to eventually test its cars in biplane mode, whereby the car rotates 90 degrees, and the trunk and hood become its wings.
“The novelty is integrating a car into the aviation infrastructure and air traffic,” CEO Jim Dukhonvy said in a statement. "Working in safe, controlled, non-towered airport environments will help Alef, the FAA, airport operators, and pilots see how this will work in the future at scale."
Clear skies ahead
Joby has been conducting high-profile demonstration test flights in recent months across New York and the San Francisco Bay Area as it gets closer to its goal of offering commercial air taxi service that it hopes will someday whiz commuters across cities in gridlock-free comfort.
The startup is partnering with real estate investors and parking operators to repurpose rooftops, parking lots and airports to create an aerial transit network of vertiports where their air taxis can take off and land.
Joby bought a manufacturing facility in January in Vandalia, Ohio, near where the Wright brothers built the first powered heavier-than-air aircraft. The purchases by Joby and its competitors — including Archer Aviation and Wisk Aero — across the country are part of an effort to bring commercial air taxi service to market in the next few years.
Air taxi operators still face headwinds from lengthy FAA approvals and high real estate and operational costs. These companies will also need to win over consumers concerned about safety and pricing, with NASA estimating air taxi costs at $6 to $11 per mile.
Joby is leveraging partnerships to turn its innovation into a reality well beyond quiet California coastal farm towns; it is now working with the federal eVTOL Integration Pilot Program to begin early operations this year in 12 states.