Joby: The Future of Mobility is Up in the Air?
By: Danae Pepelassis
The Ivey Business Review is a student publication conceived, designed and managed by Honors Business Administration students at the Ivey Business School.
For decades, flying cars have been the ultimate symbol of the future, an idea confined to sci-fi movies and bold predictions. But what if that future is already here? With electrical vertical takeoff and landing aircrafts (eVTOLs), Joby is making urban air travel an everyday reality.
Joby Aviation
Since 2009, Joby has been transforming the aerospace industry with its innovative approach to aerial transportation. Under a vertically integrated model, Joby designs, manufactures, owns, and operates its eVTOLs to provide clean, fast, quiet, and convenient rides. Capable of carrying a pilot and up to four passengers, the Joby S4 eVTOL is optimized for urban routes of 25 miles, with a target range of 100 miles on just one charge. Moving at up to 200mph while being “quiet as a conversation” and producing zero emissions, Joby eVTOL’s could alleviate urban congestion by enabling flight from city centers to existing heliports, airports, and new vertiport locations closer to where people live and work. Through a seamless app-based ridesharing service, Joby aims to make aerial transportation eventually widely accessible, serving both individual passengers and government agencies like the U.S. Air Force. With the potential to make deliveries up to 10 times faster than driving, Joby is pioneering a new era of urban mobility.
Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) Market
The AAM industry encompasses innovative and transformative methods of moving people, goods, and services by air. Currently, in an era of immense growth, Morgan Stanley projections place the urban mobility sector’s total addressable market at $1 trillion globally by 2040.
Competitive Landscape
Despite there being over 400 companies developing eVTOL designs and concepts, only a handful of notable players have emerged with substantial progress. Joby belongs to the ‘Big 3’ dominating the North American landscape, which also includes BETA Technologies and Archer Aviation.
The recent failures of multiple European eVTOL developers may boost Joby’s potential for market leadership. In March 2025, German aerospace company Lilium Air Mobility filed for insolvency for the second time. They cited a failure to receive funding in time to cover the reported over €1.5B in spending to develop their aircraft. Less than a year prior, Volocopter also filed for insolvency in Germany. If Joby can avoid the same financial shortcomings, it can further solidify its dominance among other eVTOL companies.
Why Joby?
Joby differentiates itself by outpacing competitors in Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification and growing a strong network of industry partners. In early 2024, Joby became the first eVTOL developer to complete three out of five stages of the FAA’s rigorous type certification process. They ended the year with even more milestone accomplishments, surpassing over 50 percent completion of Stage 4 (Testing and Analysis) and demonstrating early action in Stage 5 (Verification). Joby also boasts a wide range of partnerships with infrastructure providers, airlines, automotive companies, and ridesharing apps. Toyota serves as their largest partner to date, having invested nearly $400M towards developing Joby’s high-volume manufacturing capabilities. After acquiring Uber’s air taxi operation, Elevate, Joby gained vital go-to-market tactics and a lucrative opportunity to integrate into a powerful existing rideshare user base. In March 2025, Joby expanded their global reach through a lucrative partnership with Virgin Atlantic to launch air taxi services in the UK.
Joby also maintains a unique focus on scaling their production capabilities to prepare for commercialization. In addition to their San Carlos, CA headquarters, Joby doubled the footprint of their Marina, CA facility to support more space for manufacturing and training. They also broke ground on an over 40,300 square foot facility in Dayton, Ohio, that could deliver 500 aircrafts per year. They have also indicated interest in a separate 140-acre site to support future manufacturing growth. This far surpasses competitors like BETA, who are only now aiming to transition from R&D to development.
With their first air taxi services said to launch in Dubai as early as 2026, all eyes are on Joby.
Joby Facing Strong Headwinds on the Path to Takeoff
Financial Losses
Despite seemingly encouraging progress, Joby has yet to reap the rewards from its commercial activities. The company saw a net operating loss of US$608 million in 2024, with flight service revenue only contributing US$136K. Moreover, JOBY’s share price on the NYSE has seen a fairly consistent decline during 2025, falling from a peak of $10.27 in January to a closing price of $6.33 as of March 2025. A 45 percent increase in institutional ownership in 2024 proves sophisticated investors have been buying into the “eVTOL hype” despite being met with disappointing results. At the root of these troubles lies industry-wide issues regarding government certification and development that hinder eVTOL commercialization. With a narrow scope on air taxis, Joby has severely limited their ability to generate sufficient revenue while they prepare for a passenger-focused market to become viable.
Regulatory Struggles
The novelty of eVTOL technology has challenged both the FAA and Joby. Since no centralized guidelines originally existed for this specific aircraft, eVTOL manufacturers worked directly with the FAA to create standards unique to each model. In 2022, the FAA decided eVTOLs are “powered lifts” and could no longer be certified as airplanes. This decision reversed years of collaboration between Joby and the government, who had built their prototypes under the former assumption. In 2024, the FAA finally announced a more standardized certification eVTOL process. Adapting to these dynamic regulations created a learning curve on Joby’s manufacturing processes that was “steeper than originally anticipated,” according to CEO JoeBen Bevirt.
Product and Commercialization Challenges
A prototype crash in February 2022 significantly extended Joby’s commercialization timeline. The remotely piloted prototype lost a propeller blade during testing near Jolon, California. The shock factor of this crash emphasized the importance of conducting more uncrewed flight tests, especially as eVTOL technology is in a relatively new and “high-risk” phase. This inevitably held Joby back from advancing into in-person testing, hindering their ability to prove the tech’s validity to investors and the public. The complexity of this technology left Joby waiting for answers for two years until the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) published a final report on the incident in 2024. These delays have restricted innovation through lengthy investigations preventing companies from incorporating lessons learned into technical improvements.
In 2022, Joby officially decided to push back eVTOL commercialization to 2025. While Type Inspection Authorization (TIA) flight testing is expected to begin in the next twelve months, analysts fear Joby’s small-scale commercial launch will again be delayed.
Freight Takes Flight: An Uber Freight and Joby Partnership
Joby’s existing history with Uber opens the door for a lucrative new alliance that will allow Joby to capitalize on the early successes of Uber Freight to move into cargo services. To remain financially sustainable as the passenger eVTOL industry develops, Joby Aviation should pivot some eVTOL’s for cargo use and form a partnership with Uber Freight.
What would the partnership look like?
Through this strategic alliance, existing Joby eVTOL’s would be slightly modified to carry shipments between warehouses and fulfillment centers of American e-commerce and retail giants, such as Walmart and Target. This would enable a more efficient movement of goods, drastically reducing delivery times. In the long term, integration into urban centers for delivery would be lucrative once infrastructure and regulations become more developed and people are more accepting of this technology in their backyards.
A Joby and Uber Freight partnership can be facilitated by seamlessly pivoting some operations toward producing drone eVTOLs. In comparison to passenger vehicles, the process of creating and certifying a drone eVTOL is much simpler. Drones only require basic FAA operational approvals, compared to Joby’s current, more complex certification process defined under the powered-lift category. With well-established, simplified regulations and no passenger safety or pilot training requirements, Joby can profitably pursue this opportunity and expect to face fewer regulatory barriers with eVTOL drones.
Elevating Uber Freights Logistics
Utilising eVTOLs immediately would proactively address threats in the trucking industry that would harm Uber Freights operations. More specifically, an existing shortage of young truck drivers means that expanding to air-based freight transportation would reduce Uber Freight's reliance on an unstable supply of drivers by taking advantage of the present North American pilot surplus. Furthermore, with 15 percent of daily road shipments being canceled due to weather, waiting time, or traffic, eVTOL technology would allow Uber Freight to mitigate supply chain disruptions through more efficient delivery and even expand its services to reach virtually any location. Growing concerns about road emissions indicate it is time for Uber to look towards more sustainable solutions. A shift towards air-based, electric transport will position Uber Freight to meet the expected $350 billion demand for green logistics by 2030. A partnership with Joby also alleviates the burden of vehicle development from Uber. Joby’s core engineering competencies and vertical integration enable Uber Freight to maintain a presence in the eVTOL industry without bearing the major costs and headaches from development, certification, and production.
Incentive for Joby
As Uber Freight sees early and sustained success, having recently opened their 10th cross-border location in Mexico, Joby can take advantage of this budding growth to diversify their operations alongside a powerful, long-term partner. Joby can build on Uber’s experience in developing a go-to-market value chain, logistics, and infrastructure for a successful commercial launch of their ridesharing eVTOL service. External competitive pressures from Beta Technologies’ contracts with Amazon and UPS further incentivize Joby’s prompt entrance into cargo. This partnership would also allow Joby to make strides in legitimizing their eVTOL technology. Existing skepticism around eVTOLs damages their reputation as a commercial transport alternative. “Easing” the public into these vehicles would cement their value in the minds of consumers by making them more accepting towards eventually riding in one as a passenger. Above all, this partnership will open the horizon for what this technology is capable of and improve the financial stability of both companies as they work towards building the future of flying cars we all imagine.
Cleared for Takeoff
Joby Aviation is leading the charge in urban air mobility, but its long-term success hinges on overcoming financial and regulatory hurdles. A strategic pivot into cargo with Uber Freight could provide much-needed financial stability and accelerate public adoption of eVTOLs. If Joby plays its cards right, the future of flying cars can finally be cleared for lift-off.
