NASA is testing electric flying cars for a business that’s hoping to launch a commercial air taxi service in 2024.
Joby Aviation, founded in 2009, builds all-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that it hopes will eventually each shuttle up to four passengers and a pilot at a time from A to B in the sky.
Joby last year acquired Uber Elevate from Uber that, as the name suggests, specializes in “aerial ridesharing.” Joby’s goal is to not only make the aircraft but also build an app that can be used to arrange eVTOL flights perhaps as easy as requesting a driver for the road. How that’ll actually work out in practice… well, we’ll have to see.
Before this ambitious service can go live, Joby has to meet technical and safety requirements set by the FAA. The biz said it aims to be certified by 2023 having completed “more than 1,000 flight tests” and having had “full-scale prototypes in the air…