Yahoo Finance

Joby announcing $500 million in additional funding from Toyota today, bringing Toyota's total investment in Joby to nearly $1 billion. For more, we've got Joby Aviation CEO Joe Ben Bevirt here in studio with us. Joe Ben, congratulations on the funding round. We're excited to talk with you about it.

Thank you so much.

So, take me into the chats with Toyota here. I mean, they're a car company, you're a plane company. They're not really into EVs just yet. Why does this make sense?

So, uh, Toyota has the Toyota family has had a dream of, um, building, uh, aircraft for daily transportation since, uh, the founding of Toyota. And, uh, so and that has been passed down through the generations. And so, uh, now we've had a relationship with with Toyota for for seven years, uh, where first, uh, Toyota Ventures invested in, uh, 2017, and then Toyota invested in 2019. Uh, we've expanded the partnership. We've had Toyota engineers working, uh, on-site with us in California helping to design our processes and bring the incredible quality that Toyota is known for to aviation manufacturing. And so this is just an incredibly exciting time.

Joe Ben, it's very exciting for your business. I was reading a statement from Toyota earlier today saying that with this additional investment, we are excited to see Joby certify their aircraft and shift to commercial production. I'm curious if you can walk us through just your plans for this capital and what those timelines look like in order to get to that commercial, uh, manufacturing and production.

Yeah, so we, uh, we have our our pilot line, uh, in Marina, California. And, uh, with that, our target is to get to, uh, a run rate of, uh, and run rate capacity of one one aircraft a month by the end of the year. We've broken ground on a larger facility, uh, in Marina, uh, where we're going to be able to expand that capacity. Uh, we've got our our facility in in Ohio, um, which we're beginning to hire employees for. So we are we are beginning the the baby steps of the the early part of this journey. But with Toyota at our side, uh, we have the capacity to take this to another level. And, uh, that's why this is, uh, such an an, uh, credible collaboration that we have with Toyota. And we are just so grateful for them, uh, leaning in for the reliable reliability and quality with which they're able to build vehicles. And, uh, we just we couldn't be more thrilled.

Yeah, and when I was at the manufacturing facility, one of them in California, I was able to see that. And Eric told me that you guys kind of have an assembly line that's similar to the way that a car is assembled, and that's one of the influences that the Toyota has had on the company moving forward. You can see my little flight. It was a simulation. Don't worry anyone. I wasn't driving the thing. Uh, but speaking of who's driving these things, I do want to talk to you about what's next in terms of clearance. One of the big questions is that the FAA has yet to release that final ruling on outlines for what pilot certification might look like moving forward. Uh, I know that you guys have a very aggressive plan for kicking things off in 2025. If you don't even have the pilot certification rules yet, how are you going to do that?

Well, so one of the fantastic things is that the FAA is actually ahead of schedule. So they committed by the end of this year to release that, and what we're hearing is, uh, that we may see that come in, uh, in the very near term. So that's incredibly promising that the FAA is just delivering on, uh, on their goals. So that's that's on the piloting side. In terms of the certification of our aircraft, uh, we're, uh, making spectacular progress. And there's one of the things we do as a company is, uh, that we're, uh, very transparent about our progress in every quarter. We release exactly how far, uh, Joby is and exactly the progress that the FAA has made on each of the five stages of certification. And, uh, this last quarter, uh, we showed that we're more than a third of the way through stage four on the Joby side, and the FAA is making great progress. And we're expecting that, uh, progress to continue to accelerate on both our side and the FAA side as we move into the back half of this year.

Joe Ben, I'm curious what you expect demand to look like. And I think a lot of that's around it depends on pricing and and how affordable this is going to be. I know you've said in the past that you want to make or you plan to make it affordable. I guess what is affordable? And how do you do it when you would think, I at least I would guess, a lot of the input costs are very high in these types of businesses.

The amazing thing about this aircraft is because it flies so much faster than you can move on the ground, you're not constrained by, uh, the constraints of ground transportation. The aircraft can be far more productive. That is that it can move more people more miles per hour. And so that makes the operating economics very compelling. And what that delivers is the ability for us to, uh, launch at, uh, a price comparable to Uber Black and drive that price over time down to something that's comparable to Uber X, which we believe makes it broadly accessible. And that's why this is so exciting, and you see companies like Toyota, um, very, uh, leaning in and viewing this as a really important next phase of mobility.

With those input costs to Shana's point, you've got to electrify vertiports, you got to get the batteries. I mean, you've got the labor of the pilot. I could go on and on and on. Uh, I'm curious from your perspective then how much you're looking at automation as a potential way to get those costs down and when you'll be more open about pursuing automation. I know you've historically said that's not in the cards for you right now, but that is a huge potential cost saver for the company.

So we, uh, we've been working on, uh, increasing levels of automation for many years. Uh, we we recently acquired, uh, one of the leaders in, uh, the autonomous aircraft space called X-Wing. Uh, they've been doing spectacular work, and, uh, it's fantastic to bring that team in. But we are launching our service as a piloted service. We think this is best for, uh, consumers and the best way to fit into the existing aviation ecosystem. Uh, and as as we look to, uh, bring our aircraft to to cities like New York and LA, last week, uh, we had our aircraft, uh, in LA, and the reception from consumers, the excitement, is just so visceral. Um, we this week we have it at Grand Central Station, and we'd love, uh, everybody to to come by and check it out. Uh, it's a really beautiful location. And, uh, we love being here in New York. We had the aircraft out here when we went public. We had it out here again, uh, this last fall, and we were able to, uh, do flights from the the, um, Wall Street heliport. And people getting to see and hear the incredible characteristic of this aircraft, and to have the city's commitment, the port authority's commitment to to be electrifying the vertiports here. We have a spectacular partnership with with Delta. And, uh, we're really excited to be bringing our vertiports to LaGuardia and JFK.

We look forward to covering the story, especially when you do get approval. Congratulations on this latest round of investment. We appreciate you taking the time, Joe Ben.

Thank you.