And with one click you're booking the whole trip. Paul Sciarra: Take out your phone, pull out an app. He's Joby's executive chairman and says they'll launch in up to three cities, and that passengers will eventually end up paying around three to four dollars a mile to fly - a little more than an average Uber ride.Īnderson Cooper: Can you just take me through, as a passenger, what it looks like? I wanna get to JFK Airport- it's bumper to bumper traffic. The Jobyīillionaire Paul Sciarra, co-founder of the website pinterest, has also put in a small fortune. Toyota has invested about $400 million in Joby, and Bevirt took the company public last year. Joeben Bevirt: Exactly, the operation, the pilot training, the maintenance- steps, every facet is heavily regulated.Īll this costs a lot of money. So a typical aircraft might have one big motor, but we can have six motors distributed throughout the aircraft, and in that way operate in a much more efficient manner. Jon Wagner: You had to play to the strengths of battery power, and the strengths of electric motors. At Joby, he figured out a way to make the batteries lighter, but still powerful enough to get the two-ton eVTOL off the ground. Joeben Bevirt: There were definitely skeptics- even, you know, good friends of mine- who didn't believe that you could make- this with batteries and electric propulsion.Īnderson Cooper: The battery technology just wasn't there, it wouldn't work?īevirt hired Jon Wagner away from Tesla, where he helped develop the car's revolutionary batteries. ![]() Joeben Bevirt: Exactly, because we needed to make sure that the aircraft was gonna be quiet enough.īevirt studied mechanical engineering at Stanford, where he invented this popular flexible camera tripod and later created a company that made flying wind turbines, but the Joby had remained an elusive dream. As we landed, it felt like the old guard meeting the new. He took us to this remote facility in California, where he's testing his eVTOL, the Joby Aircraft. We flew in a gas-guzzling helicopter with one of the frontrunners in the air taxi arms race - Joeben Bevirt, CEO of Joby Aviation. Some eVTOL companies are well on their way. So once it's met that safety threshold, and only until it's met that safety threshold, will we be- be prepared to certify it. So that means how do we put it within our nation's air space. Is it piloted? Is it autonomous? We look at where it will operate. ![]() And I'm just amazed by the amount of innovation that has taken place.īilly Nolen was head of safety for the FAA before being named acting administrator last month.Īnderson Cooper: How difficult a certification process is there? Because there's a lot of moving parts to this?īilly Nolen: First, we have to certify the design of the- of the aircraft itself. But when you think about it, I- I look back- over the arc of my own career having been a pilot for 42 years. And dozens of companies are already working with the FAA.Īnderson Cooper: It's not the flying cars that science fiction movies anticipated?īilly Nolen: No. The Air Force is investing, so is Airbus and American Airlines. Matt Chasen: Yeah, I think there's a huge market for people to just experience the thrill and joy of flight.Īround the world, all kinds of eVTOL are being developed cargo carriers, air ambulances, and a whole lot of air taxis - some with a pilot, some without. Chasen plans to start offering rides to paying customers for $250 by the end of this year.Īnderson Cooper: The initial market you see is essentially joy rides for people? So to give people a taste of the future now, Chasen designed Hexa as an ultralight vehicle, which means it doesn't have to go through the Federal Aviation Administration's complex certification process, but also can't fly over populated areas. Federal, state and local regulators - not to mention the nation's airspace - aren't ready for hundreds of thousands of commuters piloting their own eVTOLs in the skies over congested cities. We see- putting fleets of aircraft at locations, where we provide maintenance, we provide training and people can come in and basically pay per flight.īut that's still a long way off. These are- these are very expensive aircraft. Matt Chasen: We don't see individual ownership as very practical. Matt Chasen: You can fly ten miles in ten minutes instead of spending over an hour on the roads during rush hour congestion.Īnderson Cooper: Would it be something that an individual then- in the future owns and flies from their house to somewhere?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |