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Posted on 07/23/2025 7:39:34 PM PDT by nickcarraway
KSBW is taking you on a rare test flight of Joby Aviation's electric air taxi on the Central Coast.
Santa Cruz-based startup Joby Aviation, an air taxi, gave KSBW an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at one of its test flights at the Marina Municipal Airport.
Its aircraft, powered by six electric motors, are special because of their vertical takeoff and landing capabilities and are 100 times quieter than a helicopter.
Advertisement They've flown more than 40,000 miles and expect to fit up to four passengers, a pilot, plus some luggage.
"This is like flying in a helicopter. It's a fun thing to do, and most people are going to be very comfortable with it, I believe," Peter Wilson, Joby director of flight standards and training, said.
Aircraft fly no more than 10 miles during test flights.
While in the air on Wednesday, Joby collected performance data, including how the motors, propellers and batteries all perform at different speeds.
"We build all these computer models that predict how these aircrafts should perform at these different speeds and configurations," Joby's chief product officer, Eric Allison, said. "And so this one, I think we were looking at particularly matching some of our performance predictions. So basically, how much power relative to how fast you're going, and then that lets us tune our models to make better predictions down the road."
Pilots learn to fly in simulators.
They're made up of two key parts: the physical replica of the air taxi itself, and an immersive experience, as if flying in the real world.
The software running in the simulator is the same software that's in an actual aircraft.
"If a primary system fails, there's always, always a secondary system that can step in, and in many cases, there's a third system as well, so you actually have what we call a triplex system," Wilson said. "It's pretty much guaranteed that we're going to be able to complete every single flight that we embark upon."
Joby expects to begin flying passengers in Dubai next year.
They're still working to meet safety standards set by the FAA in the U.S. before they can fly commercially.
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That is mostly why I do not want to do it...
Second reason - California.
I’ll pass. What if somebody moves the fuel control switches to ‘off’ as the pilot did in that Air India crash? /sarc
Well. That's good to know!
It will never replace a turbine helicopter for long flights of say 200 nautical miles or more, as battery weight verses total energy stored is quite simple, Jet-A wins, battery loses. It is all about energy density per pound and Jet A always wins. It might have an application for short hops. British Airways years ago used Sikorsky-S61s to do the short hop from Heathrow to Gatwick for passengers at great cost to British Airways. It was all about keeping the customer on connecting flights from Gatwick and not losing them to another airline.
I would not ride in this machine until I saw data on engine out performance due to battery failure or more important can they keep the aircraft stable with one or two engines out on the same side.
I’d also want to see how well the batteries handle a hard but survivable landing or controlled autorotor ground stop (and bounce).
An electric aircraft is a truly idiotic idea.
Market symbol JOBY. Their stock jumped today.
The Huey of Vietnam had one rotor, one engine, two pilots and a tail rotor. In effect 4 points of potential failure. It was a magnificent machine that brought many wounded boys home and at the same time much sacrifice to those brave pilots, crew and wounded. Those pilots were angels and brave with a mission they could not deny.
“Aircraft fly no more than 10 miles during test flights.”
1000 lbs. of batteries in a Tesla gets you about the same distance as 60 lbs. of gasoline in a similar car.
So, yeah, 10 miles for a battery-powered airplane sounds about right.
It does have what appears to be an airfoil, or am I wrong? The airfoil would soften any auto-rotation, landing situation.
“... or more important can they keep the aircraft stable with one or two engines out on the same side.”
That would be like an ‘everyone dies’ engine failure on an Osprey ..
The former Ft Ord airfield.
The third safety feature is the parachute....
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