Uber Found Another Partner To Boost Its Plan To Release Air Taxies In 2023

Uber’s plan to release an air taxi service for urban transportation has just got the aid of Joby Aviation, an aerospace company that has been developing electric aviation for more than ten years. Joby has expressed its commitment to Uber’s plan to launch the air taxi service in 2023.

Inventor JoeBen Bevirt is the one behind Joby, which was set up in 2009. Not much was revealed about the operation of the company until 2018, when it announced that it had had $100 million of investment from several investors, including those of JetBlue, Intel, and Toyota.

The investment has helped with the development of a prototype for air taxies, which is testing at the company’s airfield in California.

Joby did make public some rendering photos showing something that looks like a hybrid of drone and plane with seats for four passengers and 12 rotors. A spokesperson said that the company is working on something entirely new, but it has no yet released any more recent images of the prototype.

In 2018, Bloomberg published a profile of Joby, sharing some details on what exactly the company is working on. It appears that the air taxi takes off vertically and looks like a cross between a drone and plane with motors run on electricity. Its speed is twice as much as that of a typical helicopter. The inventor behind the company said that some days, there will be a fleet of these air taxis taking people from place to place.

According to Uber, a contract lasting several years has been inked. What the two companies aim at with this collaboration is an affordable, clean, and reliable taxi service for certain markets. The terms have not been disclosed.

What we know for sure is the basic role of each company. Joby will be in charge of providing and operating the air taxis while Uber will help with the ride-share network, air traffic control, and the construction of the landing pad. When the air taxis are launched, Uber users will be able to hail a drone-helicopter instead of a car.

Uber has its own idea of aircraft, but it also said that it wanted to find partners that can meet its requirements on the noise level, energy use, and vertical take-off. And partners that can produce tens of thousands of these vehicles to support the company’s on-demand service.

Joby is just the latest in Uber’s list of six other partners, including Bell, Jaunt, Aurora Flight Sciences, Embraer, Karem Aircraft, and Pipistrel. All of them are working on their prototypes for air taxis used for Uber’s future services.

Joby’s CEO JoeBen Bevirt said that he was confident that air taxies would allow people to get to where they want five-time faster than usual, help with reducing traffic congestion, and switch to a more sustainable mode of transportation.

The plan seems to be promising, but please bear in mind that many other companies, including Joby, have been quite vocal about their intention to make new aircraft but we have not seen many of them make it to reality. One of these companies, Hawk, backed by Larry Page, Google’s co-founder is in the process of reorganizing after some reports of battery fires and breakdowns.

It is unclear for now whether the vertically take off and land air taxis will be a meaningful contribution to the next generation of the transport systems.