Flying Taxis Are Coming. No, Seriously, This Time They Mean It
Image Credit: Joby Aviation.
We've been promised the flying car for as long as I've been messing about with things that go. It's been the automotive equivalent of "just five more minutes" for about seventy years now. We were supposed to be flitting about like George Jetson by now, complaining about sky-jams and rogue pigeons. Instead, we're still stuck on the ground, staring at the taillights of a 2011 minivan. At least that's how I spent this morning.
But Joby Aviation might just be the one to finally get this ridiculous, glorious dream off the ground. And they've brought in the sensible grown-ups from Toyota to make sure they don't fly too close to the sun.
Image Credit: Joby Aviation.
Now, what exactly is a "Joby?" It's not quite a car and not quite a helicopter. It's an eVTOL, which stands for "electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing" aircraft. In simple terms, it's a sleek, quiet, battery-powered pod with six enormous propellers that can tilt. It takes off and lands straight up like a chopper, but then the props tilt forward and it flies like a proper airplane. It is the brilliant offspring of a helicopter and a Tesla, with none of the noise and all of the Silicon Valley optimism. It's the sort of thing you'd expect to see in Star Wars, not being assembled in California.
And that's the big news. They're not just doodling these things on napkins anymore; they're building factories. Proper ones. Joby has just massively expanded its production facility in Marina, California, to 435,000 square feet. That's enough floor space to host a truly biblical game of hide-and-seek. This expanded plant is where the magic starts: it's where they'll handle FAA certifications, test the aircraft, train the pilots, and screw together the first production models.
Image Credit: Joby Aviation.
How many, you ask? Well, this California plant is geared up to produce twenty-four aircraft a year. Yes, a whole two dozen. That's two per month. At that pace, you might want to get your order in now if you'd like one before the sun engulfs the Earth. It sounds modest, I know. It sounds like a cottage industry for the fabulously wealthy. And on its own, it would be.
But this is where the story actually gets serious. This is where Toyota enters the chat. The Japanese giant is no silent investor cutting checks from afar - they have their engineers deeply embedded with the Joby team. These are the people who perfected the art of building millions of reliable, sensible cars. And now, they're applying that same know-how to help Joby streamline assembly, design custom tools, and generally figure out how to build these complex machines efficiently and without bits falling off. When the company that makes the Camry says your flying machine is a good idea, you tend to listen.
Image Credit: Joby Aviation.
The initial 24-a-year plan is just the appetizer. The main course is being prepared in Dayton, Ohio, the very cradle of American aviation. Joby is setting up another facility there, and this one is the real behemoth. The goal for the Ohio plant isn't a couple of dozen aircraft; it's to eventually make as many as 500 eVTOLs per year. Suddenly, we've gone from a niche experiment to mass production. Five hundred flying taxis a year changes the game entirely. That's no longer a dream - it's an entire industry.
And don't think for a second these things are just sitting in a hangar collecting dust. Joby has been on a world tour. They've done demonstration flights over the concrete canyons of New York City. They've zipped through the skies of Dubai, where the government was so impressed they gave Joby an exclusive six-year deal to run the country's first air taxi service. If you can sell an electric flying machine in the oil capital of the world, my friends, you've officially made it. They even took one to Japan and flew it with Mount Fuji in the background, just to rub it in.
Image Credit: Joby Aviation.
As always, a healthy dose of skepticism is what the doctor prescribed. I can already picture the chaos. "Sorry, I'm late, there was a three-aircraft pile-up over the park... A goose flew into someone's rotor." The logistical and regulatory requirements are immense. But the prospect is just too cool to ignore. Skipping the soul-crushing gridlock of the morning commute by simply hopping in an air taxi and soaring over it all? That's a future I'm excited about.
Joby's Chief Product Officer, Eric Allison, said it best: "Reimagining urban mobility takes speed, scale, and precision manufacturing." It's not just about building a cool prototype anymore. Their sixth aircraft just earned its airworthiness certificate within a week of being built, which shows that Toyota's manufacturing prowess is already paying dividends. They are building a repeatable, scalable process.
Image Credit: Joby Aviation.
The flying car has been a punchline for longer than I care to admit. It's been a symbol of a future that never arrived. But looking at Joby's progress, with the industrial might of Toyota behind them, I'm starting to feel a familiar, dangerous tingle of hope. They're already building the factories, securing the deals, and flying the missions. The flying taxi is coming, and it might be here sooner than any of us think.
