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The commercialization of flying cars ushered in a major development:
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recently issued 135 air carrier certificates to flying car company Joby Aviation.
This means that taxi services fly from the ground to the city, officially licensed for the first time.
It also means that the business model and low-altitude right of way envisaged by flying cars have been clarified for the first time.
The atmosphere has been opened, is the global outbreak still far away?
Flying cars allowed to operate commercially?
To be precise, it is still in the trial operation stage.
Recently, flying car company Joy Aviation officially announced that after a five-stage certification process, it has recently obtained 135 air carrier certificates from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), becoming the first flying car company to be allowed to carry out air taxi services.
Joby Aviation's fleet of air taxis, after receiving the Sword of Shangfang, can carry passengers over cities and communities in the United States.
But according to regulatory requirements, Joby Aviation's air taxis will initially use conventional vertical take-off and landing vehicles (which we call helicopters).
The purpose of this phase of the trial run is to verify and simulate the systems and procedures for the commercial operation of air taxis before the mass production of flying vehicles.
The Joby Aviation real flying car CIRRUS-SR22 will not be mass-produced until 2024, when it can officially open the commercialization service of flying cars.
But before that, Joby Aviation has two more thresholds to address: model certification and production certification.
In other words, the flying cars produced by Joby Aviation must meet the design and safety standards stipulated by the FFA and obtain the access documents for the manufacture of aircraft before they can officially carry out commercial operations.
The whole process can be simply understood as a condensed version of the airline's access procedures.
Although the initial passenger carrier was still a helicopter, the more far-reaching significance of Joby Aviation's certification as an FFA air carrier is that the commercialization of flying cars has since been officially licensed and has begun to enter the trial operation stage.
This is worth as much to the industry as a whole as Robotaxi's legal on-road tolls.
As the first player to achieve this achievement, Joby Aviation also needs to understand.
Who is Joby Aviation?
Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Santa Cruz, California, Joby Aviation has a team of more than 1,000 people and offices in Santa Cruz, San Carlos, Washington, D.C., and Munich, Germany.
Joby Aviation's founder, Joe Ben Bevirt, studied engineering at the University of California, Davis and Stanford, and has more than 40 patents.
According to Bevett himself, the idea of building flying cars dates back to childhood, and this dream began to land after founding Joby Aviation.
After nearly 10 years of more than 1,000 test flights, Joby Aviation launched its dream prototype, the CIRRUS-SR22.
According to official disclosures, the CIRRUS-SR22 is an eVTOL (Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing Aircraft) that uses pure electric power and can reach a maximum endurance of 150 miles (about 240 kilometers).
The entire aircraft has 6 propellers, and adopts a layout of 2 propellers in front, middle and rear, and can carry 5 crew members including the pilot.
This aircraft, once launched, has been noticed by major investors, especially Toyota.
According to public information, Joby Aviation has carried out 3 rounds of financing before going public, and Toyota, as the largest investor, has participated in 2 rounds of financing:
- In December 2016, it raised $30 million in Series A funding by Capricorn Investment Group.
- In January 2019, Joby Aviation received another $100 million in Series B funding from Intel and Toyota.
- In January 2020, Joby Aviation raised $590 million in Series C funding, with lead investor Toyota contributing $394 million in this round.
So far, Joby Aviation has raised $720 million in financing, including more than $400 million from Toyota.
In February last year, Joby Aviation successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange in reverse mergers with special purpose acquisition companies (SPAC), stock codes "JOBY" and "JOBY WS", raising more than $1 billion.
Joby Aviation opened at $10.62 on its first day of listing and was valued at $4.5 billion, but as of Friday's close, Joby Aviation's share price was trading at $6.01 per share, and its market value had fallen to $3.645 billion.
At the business level, as early as 2020, Joby Aviation has obtained airworthiness approval from the FFA, and in August last year, participated in NASA's flying car test to verify the operation and safety of its products.
At present, Joby Aviation has begun to deploy overseas markets, and in February this year, it cooperated with Ana Holdings Inc, Japan's largest airline, to provide passenger transportation services on the route from Osaka to Kansai Airport.
Toyota participated in the cooperation project as a ground transportation.
As for the large-scale commercial operation, Joby Aviation's timeline in the prospectus is 2024, when CIRRUS-SR22 will be officially mass-produced and put into use.
What about domestic players?
Turning to the domestic, the entire industry situation, summed up as a large number of players, but the commercialization progress is slow.
Domestic flying car players, in addition to Xiaopeng, a new car-making force, are also familiar with Yihang Intelligence, which has been listed on the US stock market, Weihang Technology, which is supported and incubated by Tsinghua University, and Taili Flying Car, a subsidiary of Geely Automobile.
Among them, the fastest progress is EHang Intelligence, in addition to test flying show muscles, but also signed a commercial order. At the beginning of this year, Japanese air transportation digital platform company AirX signed an order for 50 flying cars EH216 with EHang Intelligent.
Geely's Hercules received airworthiness from the FAA's FAA in January last year.
However, at the level of commercial operation, the general progress of domestic players is relatively slow, the main reason is still the threshold of market access, that is, the airworthiness requirements of flying cars in China are not clear.
On a global scale, the exploration of the airworthiness of flying cars is mainly based on Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea.
The most representative such as the United States, as early as 2020, the airworthiness of eVTOL (flying car) aircraft was regulated, removing the basic obstacles to flying cars in the sky.
In the same year, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Infrastructure of the Republic of Korea released a planning plan for urban air traffic, which is expected to start commercial operation of flying cars in 2025.
Japan issued the "Growth Strategy Follow-up Plan", which sets the first year of commercial operation of flying vehicles in 2023, and at the same time begins to formulate safety standards for flying car operations and a driver skills certification system.
Slovakia, a small European country, also issued the world's first airworthiness certificate for flying cars to startup Klein Vision at the beginning of this year.
In contrast, domestic exploration in related fields also began in 2020, but it was not until 2 years later that it took a step to "break the ice".
In February this year, after nearly a year of review, the Civil Aviation Administration of China issued the "Special Conditions for the EH216-S Unmanned Aerial Vehicle System of EHang" for EHang intelligent flying vehicles, which stipulates the performance, structure, design and air traffic control of flying vehicles.
However, this is only the beginning, the "Special Conditions" are only for a single enterprise and a single product to make provisions, for the whole track industry standards and access regulations, it needs a long time to verify and sound. This is accompanied by social issues such as new traffic regulations and urban management challenges.
However, everything is difficult at the beginning, the most difficult first step has been taken, will the flying car legally go far to heaven?