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Joby kicks off NYC electric air taxi demos with historic JFK flight
- mfgadv99 6mo ago[dead]
- walrus01 6mo agoThe venture money behind some of the larger and more prominent electric VTOL air taxi/helicopter-plane things seems to be betting that by the time they get the hardware design, software, user interface and general safety systems to 100%, battery technology will also have become a lot better. I'm referring to Joby, Archer, Wisk and similar. The range is not really good right now with batteries at 255Wh/kg and much worse energy density than Jet-A fed into turbine(s). None of the evtol companies are big enough or vertically integrated enough to come up with some miracle 500Wh/kg battery on their own, so they're relying on market pressure generally to cause their battery subsystem vendors to make some significant breakthroughs. More directly related to the PR, I saw the video of the JFK to Manhattan test flights and they're being done with only the pilot on board.
- CarVac 6mo agoI think Beta's CTOL has better economic prospects, if less useful as an air taxi.
- walrus01 6mo agoMore like in a similar (but smaller) role as the Cessna 408 Skycourier, which is short to medium range, unpressurized.
- nradov 6mo agoThe venture money is betting that the e-VTOL technology can be weaponized. Small, disposable drones have been getting all the attention lately due to the war between Russia and Ukraine. But longer term there are a lot of potential missions for larger VTOL combat aircraft — both drones and crewed.
- walrus01 6mo agoThe 'final' decision was recently made to go ahead with the massive project for this, which is eventually intended to replace the UH60/Blackhawk type platform. Traditional big money defense contractor stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_MV-75_Cheyenne_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_MV-75_Cheyenne_II
- nradov 6mo agoThe military operates more than one type of aircraft. I don't think an MV-75 will fit very well on an FF(X), for example.
- amluto 6mo agoI would guess that a military version would be a hybrid: electric motors as in all the e-VTOL prototypes, enough battery power to comfortably take off, land and maneuver in combat conditions, and a small hydrocarbon-fueled engine to recharge the battery while cruising.
- dzhiurgis 6mo agoWhat problem would a hybrid solve for military? Military doesn't care about emissions and this doesn't offer resilience like fully electric does (recharge anywhere, reliability).
- nradov 6mo agoThe military cares a lot about range, signature reduction, and especially fuel efficiency. Reducing fuel usage reduces the logistical train necessary to sustain units in the field. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2025/01/22/army-tries-out-next-gen-hybrid-tactical-vehicle-prototype-in-germany/ https://www.defensenews.com/land/2025/01/22/army-tries-out-n...
- dzhiurgis 6mo agoHow is it going to reduce fuel consumption by nearly doubling the weight?
- vlovich123 6mo agoIsn’t the comparison against helicopters for regional and urban transit where EVTOLs hold an edge because of the drastic energy reduction that fixed wing has over helicopters? I mean sure long term the goal may be to wait for battery density to increase to keep moving upmarket and eat longer and longer flights from traditional aviation, but I don’t think better batteries are a requirement for the initial batch of vehicles.
- maxdo 6mo agoyou don't need crazy range to fly between jfk and city . it's doable to do it today, economically, and solve tons of problems . in a similar to ev rollout: solve problem for wealthy people, get the premium, scale cheaper options. Nothing new. Technology of today is ready.
- walrus01 6mo agoJFK and city is a relatively niche and regionally unique market compared to how short/medium range aircraft are used in general. For instance the Joby or Archer product right now wouldn't have the range to fly from a helipad on the Seattle waterfront to somewhere in the San Juan Islands. Or for a flight from Vancouver harbour to Victoria.
- maxdo 6mo agoit's every airport in every city. In new york only you have 3 airports. its a 200k+ a day traffic.
- tqi 6mo ago> solve tons of problems I'm skeptical that air taxis could ever meaningfully reduce traffic congestion to / from JFK. Compared to cars, these would seem to require a significantly larger landing pad and passenger unloading space and need much more safety margin in-between drop offs. Maybe this is competitive vs the private helicopter market?
- maxdo 6mo agotravel time is 5-10 mins with 40 mins to 2hours. Yes, it is better compared to helicopter. cheaper, less noise. e.g. you can place it more applications, for less money.
- tqi 6mo agoWell it's 5-10 minutes once you get to the west 30th st heliport, which can easily take 20 minutes within Manhattan. Plus getting loaded in, cleared for takeoff, and potential for backups at the landing pads, I suspect the gains are much less in practice.
- carabiner 6mo agoJoby actually claims their business is viable without significant advances in battery energy density. We'll see. I think this will be closer to an Eclipse Aviation business case than SpaceX.
- cyberax 6mo agoThe upcoming solid-state batteries are around 500 Wh/kg. But batteries have an advantage over turbines, especially small turbines: specific _power_ density.
- gpm 6mo agoI'm not sure I agree that they're making that bet (there's lots of market at current ranges IMHO), but even if they were it would be a great bet to make. We're talking about jumping to 375 [1] or even 400 Wh/kg in production cars this year [2] (with prototypes long since shown off). And there's every reason to believe that there's a lot more headroom in this space to improve, and that we will improve rapidly since we're making so many more batteries now. [1] https://electrek.co/2025/04/28/jeep-dodge-maker-validates-solid-state-ev-batteries-coming-soon/ https://electrek.co/2025/04/28/jeep-dodge-maker-validates-so... [2] https://www.evlithium.com/lifepo4-battery-news/calb-solid-liquid-hybrid-battery.html https://www.evlithium.com/lifepo4-battery-news/calb-solid-li...
- ec109685 6mo agoIt actually flying: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DXrvm_LAAR8/ https://www.instagram.com/reels/DXrvm_LAAR8/
- albert_e 6mo agowe cant view without a login anymore? i dont have a instal login but used tobe able to watch single videos shared directly with just a login nag
- Jblx2 6mo agohttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/D_k8Tx7GCqo https://www.youtube.com/shorts/D_k8Tx7GCqo
- Supernaut 6mo agoWhen I read the headline, I pictured something like the flying cars from "Blade Runner". What I see in the video is a helicopter with six rotors. I get that the leap forward here is that it's battery-powered. Still, I can't help feeling underwhelmed.
- troyvit 6mo agoThe main difference I read is that those airfoils actually come into play when it's not taking off and landing. That still doesn't make it nearly as cool as the air cars in Blade Runner but it's slightly better than just a helicopter too.
- rafram 6mo agoWill this be any less ridiculously loud than the conventional helicopters that fly over Brooklyn all day ferrying people to JFK?
- asukachikaru 6mo agoAccording to the guardian’s report[0], yes. 45dB compared to 100 dB for a heli. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/28/electric-aircraft-new-york-air-travel https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/28/electric-air...
- rafram 6mo ago> [...] but it does generate a significant amount of noise when it takes off and lands. The company didn’t share information on that, but it was certainly enough to make one wince – even if it nowhere near approaches the sensory assault of a regular helicopter. Could be worse, I guess.
- Dylan16807 6mo agoNotably that's 45dB when it's 500 meters away.
- xnx 6mo agoSound comparison here: https://youtu.be/IX7rdJm5v6s?t=104 https://youtu.be/IX7rdJm5v6s?t=104
- jmward01 6mo agoI am really excited to se electric aviation start to enter the market. A lot of people point out the battery density / jet-A difference and it is valid, but it isn't the whole story. Jet-A has a much lower conversion to useful work than a battery, an electric power train (minus the batteries) has a lot of opportunity to shed weight (no bleed-air, fuel plumbing, less need to safety systems). There are a lot more opportunities to explore interesting airframes because electric can be placed in unique and more efficient ways (hence the eVTOL in this story). The basic physics change a lot too. We will see how high altitude flight shakes out but there is a big potential to go higher so that more efficiency can be gained, again needing less energy. The big point here is you can't simply compare electric to gas turbine and only swap the fuel for batteries. It is a totally different set of design parameters and it has so many amazing opportunities to be better.
- jillesvangurp 6mo agoComparing battery energy density to fuel energy density usually ignores the fact that combustion engines aren't that efficient. A great counterpoint is that if you apply the logic to a 60kwh EV, it should have the range of a 2 gallon petrol car. Which of course is not the case. Most medium sized petrol cars would have at least 8-10x that for a similar range to that 60kwh EV. A more useful metric is $ per mile of range. Because if the vehicle can do the miles, that's all that matters. With the first generation of passenger drones their range isn't amazing. But their cost per mile is. And these Joby things have a useful enough range to do JFK to down town Manhattan. I've been following the market a bit. There are a few interesting vehicles moving through certifications. Beta Aviation was touring all the airshows last summer with their ALIA CX300. It's a simplified ctol model of their vtol where they kept the pusher prop but removed the other props to speed up certification. So it's more like a conventional plane. It has a range of around 300 nautical miles depending on the battery configuration (modular). They flew it coast to coast in the US and all around Europe. It should get through certification by 2027 or so. Their vtol version has been flying for a while as well but will take longer to certify. It has less range because landing and taking off vertically just eats a chunk of battery. But once it is up in the air it flies pretty much the same as the ctol. Of course the arrival of solid state batteries is going to shake things up. Everything that is close to being certified is flying without those. A potential doubling of energy densities is going to be a big deal. But certifying the batteries is going to take years.
- albertgoeswoof 6mo agoThis so inefficient it’s painful to watch. It’s about 14 miles to go from jfk to manhattan. A train could do this in 20 minutes or so. A train could ship thousands of people in one go, supports millions of ordinary people in their daily lives, and doesn’t cause excessive noise pollution at street level (not to mention the climate, safety, and infrastructure benefits) In London a new train line was built deep underground from Heathrow all the way through central London and out the other side. It stops all the way, travels further (19 miles) and still only takes 25 minutes, so don’t pretend it can’t be done. Instead of supporting people we solve problems for the 0.001% who will give us a quick buck, while we pretend we’ll one day be rich enough to ride these things
- mvkel 6mo agoThe infrastructure requirements to get a train into operation, let alone travel to a destination twenty minutes away, takes decades of development and billions. This needs a 20x20ft approximately flat surface.
- albertgoeswoof 6mo agoYou state that like decades and billions is a long time. You have 10000 people who need to do this trip every hour, how will you manage that with this? It can’t scale. In the end normal people will be stuck without proper transport, while a tiny majority will fly around in comfort.
- sho_hn 6mo agoI haven't done the math, but I wouldn't be surprised if cost/passenger over useful lifetime still shakes out better for the trains, and that's before you consider that people developing and building a train line get to eat and put their kids through schools. I can't believe seriously arguing for oversized quadcopters as a mass transport alternative.
- dzhiurgis 6mo agoEVTOLS supposed to be less complex than cars and cars are already cheaper than trains.
- dmix 6mo agoI wonder what it's like flying in one. People are scared of planes, but flying in helicopters is way scarier.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago> People are scared of planes, but flying in helicopters is way scarier Genuine question: do eVTOLs flip over in the water like helicopters do? Or is the battery place low down.
- AngryData 6mo agoCollective rotor based helicopters don't scare me at all, but drone based multi-rotor designs definitely do. A regular helicopter can safely land even with catastrophic engine failure or complete electronics failure thanks to its auto rotation capabilities, a drone platform just becomes a falling rock with zero control or stability. Plus a drone's control system is way more complicated which leaves more room for failures and problems.
- hyencomper 6mo agoAwesome! Joby needs trained pilots so that may be a bottleneck to scaling. I am guessing they would have to create autonomous air taxis like EHang to scale.
- Animats 6mo agoEhang had a scaled-up multi-rotor drone that could carry one person. They're a drone company. Worked, but max flight time was something like 17 minutes. Their new model has both lift props and wings, plus a pusher prop for horizontal thrust. Range about 200km. Joby is more like an Osprey. It takes off and lands hanging from its props, then tilts the props horizontally to operate in airplane mode. This potentially offers more range with less power consumption. They've tried running on hydrogen, and claimed 524 miles of range. There's also Archer Aviation (https://www.archer.com/ https://www.archer.com/) which has a roughly similar vehicle. Test flights since 2021. Was supposed to be in service in 2025. Didn't happen. They supposedly have an air taxi contract for the 2028 Olympics in LA. Owned, or at least heavily financed, by Stellantis. There seems to be convergence on something that transitions to airplane mode, as opposed to the previous round of giant quadrotor-type drones. It's now clear that this can be done, but not clear that there's a business in it.
- janalsncm 6mo ago> The five-bladed propellers have a low tip speed, with twisted blades designed to reduce the “whop, whop, whop” of a helicopter to the volume of leaves rustling in the wind I think they must mean when it’s high overhead. Based on the video, it’s still pretty loud up close.
- givemeethekeys 6mo agoIs it any louder than driving on the highway with the windows down? I imagine when air hits ears at a high speed, it's going to be loud.
- jillesvangurp 6mo agoPropeller noise is largely a function of rotation speed, blade size, and radius. Electrical motors have high torque and are basically silent. Torque limitations constrain the blade size on a helicopter. The whop whop comes from the relatively long blades. And because of the large diameter that happens at a relatively low RPM. So, the frequency of the noise is low as well. Hence the whop whop sound. Higher torque electrical motors enable higher RPM with smaller diameter and more blades. So, you get a higher frequency noise. Higher frequencies carry less far than lower frequencies. So, a lot of drones are measurably more quiet than helicopters when they fly overhead because they have lots of smaller propellers spinning faster. There's plenty of footage of electrical planes and drones taking off and landing at airports, air shows, etc. Some youtubers also use decibel meters. This has long stopped being a matter opinion / debate, you can just go out and measure it. The short version of it is that these things are quieter, as the physics suggests.
- gehsty 6mo agoClearly no Scottish people with oversite on naming! Loads of wee jobbies flying around!
- arethuza 6mo agoActually my first thought for something like this was places like Orkney that have a surplus of wind powered electricity (there is a connector to the mainland being built) and short flights between the islands - including the shortest scheduled commercial flight in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westray_to_Papa_Westray_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westray_to_Papa_Westray_flight So maybe one day people will take a joby to Papa Westray ;-)
- maccard 6mo agohttps://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Jobby https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Jobby This is what the parent meant.
- arethuza 6mo agoYes, I know, I'm from Scotland!
- hinoki 6mo agoMaybe one day it will be so casual that one could catch a Joby wearing some jobby catchers.
- Ekaros 6mo agoSeems awfully tiny for any real total capacity. Should scale it up to size of say large railway car size so dozens if not hundreds of people at one time. This would also cut down cost and allow wider range of population that is no limited from use to use it.
- yellow_lead 6mo agoI say the same about ground taxis - buses are much more efficient
- cli 6mo agoWhat you are describing seems outside the scope of this particular aircraft model.These are meant to land on existing helipads in NYC. From the article, the business model is to cut down 1-2 hour commutes to and from the JFK airport to seven-minute flights. Never mind the helipad space, just boarding hundreds of passengers and their luggage would cut severely into that time saving.
- Ekaros 6mo agoBut it is fundamental issue. Unless you have extremely large number of helipads. The throughput is limited to capacity of landing, deboarding, boarding and lift off. Is the 7 minutes from lift off to landing or just travel time in air? How long does boarding and deboarding take, especially with luggage? Can this system reach more than low dozens passenger per hour by pad?
- anonymous_user9 6mo agoThat doesn't matter as much when each passenger is happy to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege. 24 pax/hr * $1000/pax * 12 hr/day = $288,000/day in revenue
- iso1631 6mo agoOr perhaps take that large railway car, put a few together, and run then on or through the ground direct from the airport to a few downtown locations every couple of minutes. The efficiency per person would be ridiculously high (20,000 an hour), and I suspect the individual end-to-end speed would be faster than by air 15 minutes for JFK to West 34th Street is just 14 miles. That doesn't include any boarding/off boarding process, which are far faster in a train than anything, including in a taxi. That's about the distance from Heathrow to Paddington which also takes 15 minutes.
- CWwdcdk7h 6mo agoAren't air traffic controllers already overworked and understaffed? How does adding hundreds of tiny helicopters fit in that picture?
- Gravityloss 6mo agoAlso civilian air control needs to be handed over to Skynet
- IshKebab 6mo agoOf all the reasons not to do this, air traffic control limitations have got to be the easiest to solve.
- fergie 6mo agoReminder that New York Airways used to operate helicopter flights to the top of the Pan Am building until a 1977 accident killed five people.
- dboreham 6mo agoApparently nobody with Scottish heritage was involved in selecting that name.
- felooboolooomba 6mo agoCan it glide in case of a prop/motor failure? Or something resembling a helicopter's autorotate? Or is the passenger just SOOL if that happens?
- pjc50 6mo ago"The air taxi can continue flying with up to two motors out" says the article. Probably safer than a V-22 Osprey.
- hahajk 6mo agoI believe the entire aircraft has a parachute that can deploy in the event of engine failure. Edit: I'm wrong. https://www.ainonline.com/news-article/2022-04-08/developers-evtol-aircraft-resist-safety-case-parachutes https://www.ainonline.com/news-article/2022-04-08/developers... > Joby also insisted that the high levels of redundancy built into its four-passenger eVTOL design obviate the need for a parachute. The company, which recently lost one of its two prototype aircraft during a flight test accident, said that the vehicle can safely operate after failures to the motors, batteries, or electric propulsion units and also has the option to land vertically or glide to the ground on its wing.
- nradov 6mo agoThis is a powered lift aircraft. There is no ability to autorotate or glide. It has redundant rotors and power systems so should be pretty reliable, but if there's a catastrophic failure then it will immediately go into a spin and crash.
- felooboolooomba 6mo ago> pretty reliable Got it. If anything in this high tech state-of-the-art machine causes more than 2 motors to stop motoring then I'll most likely die in a crash. But it's not very likely that'll happen.
- stuaxo 6mo agoThat's a funny name - look up the Scottish slang "jobby".
- cucumber3732842 6mo agoIt'll be even better when UPS buys a bunch of them.
- neilv 6mo agoLooks like noise pollution. Wouldn't the city be better when the wealthy have to deal with the same services and quality of life as everyone else -- not (literally, in this case) elevating themselves above others, while making everyone else's life worse?
- tootie 6mo agoThey are supposedly quieter than helicopters and we already have a ton of helicopter noise.
- neilv 6mo agoWe also need to get rid of the unnecessary helicopter noise.
- testing22321 6mo agoThe US would benefit greatly if that were the case for all things. But alas, the owners don’t want to mingle with their slaves.
- tootie 6mo agoI'm very dubious. Primarily because this goes from landing pad to landing pad. You'll still need transportation from the pad to wherever you're going. A taxi goes door to door. And what's an extra 20 minutes if you're sitting the whole time?
- subpixel 6mo agoThis is like a person-sized Roomba. Even if it might work, within certain strict constraints, it's essentially unnecessary.
- sourcecodeplz 6mo agoLooks awesome. Wonder what happens if one engine fails, it will adjust itself probably.
- yadaeno 6mo ago2 engines can fail and it will still fly
- nDRDY 6mo agoI'd rather be in a helicopter than one of these in the case of total engine failure, and I don't really trust helicopters!