No thanks to Hanna Barbara and The Jetsons, we grew up imagining future streets crowded with hoverboards, holograms, and robot dogwalkers. Obviously, this isn’t today’s reality but Joby Aviation, a California-based aerospace company, intends to make it tomorrow’s by launching a fleet of real electric air taxis in 2024.
“We all want to spend less time travelling and more time living,” they write on their website. “At Joby Aviation, we’re making that possible with our pioneering electric aircraft. It’s a faster, cleaner, and smarter way to carry people through their lives.”
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Founded in 2009, Joby has since managed to make quite an impression with this particular philosophy – selling their ideas to the folks at Uber and well as Toyota. However, these names aren’t even the most impressive players working to push the project forward.
With $700 million in private capital funding, they’ve also caught the attention of NASA, who has actually been working with Joby to test their eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft in participation with their advanced air mobility initiative. Uhm, wow.
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Trials kicked off this week and the company has even begun hiring and training pilots in anticipation of a successful run.
So what can we expect when they hit the road … er, air? Well, from what we know so far, each vehicle will have room for four passengers and a pilot, will produce 0 operating emissions and have a top speed of 200 mph – which is pretty dang snazzy if you ask us!
Sadly for Canadians though, we’ll have to wait until they actually launch the service in Lost Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco before crossing the border.
Until then, we’ll be on the edge of our seats waiting for Joby and their air taxis to take flight – because this? This is what we expect in the 2020s.
