MARINA – Joby Aviation has rolled out its third production prototype aircraft off its pilot production line in Marina recently and expects four aircraft to be in active flight test later this year.
The aviation company has designed and produced an electric air taxi that will carry a pilot and four passengers at speeds up to 200 mph offering high-speed mobility with a fraction of the noise produced by helicopters and zero operating emissions.
Joby has been doing business and developing a manufacturing facility in Marina for about the past seven years where it launched production of its aircraft at its Pilot Production Plant with the first aircraft rolling off the line in June 2023. The Marina facility is one of three in California with others at Santa Cruz — where the company is headquartered — and San Carlos. Joby Aviation also has a facility in Munich and chose Dayton, Ohio, in September of last year, as the site for its new manufacturing plant.
In March, the company announced its acquisition of an existing facility at Dayton International Airport where it has begun hiring in support of its initial operations there. The facility acquired by Joby will be fitted out to support initial manufacturing operations in Dayton, which are expected to begin later this year. The facility will be used for the manufacturing of aircraft parts in support of Joby’s Pilot Production Line in Marina.
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In April, Joby broke ground on its new 220,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Marina expecting to begin operations in 2025. The company said the expansion will more than double the total footprint Joby Aviation has at the Marina Airport and will enable the company to deliver 25 aircraft a year.
The second production prototype aircraft to roll off the company’s pilot production line was the backdrop for the ground-breaking ceremony.
Joby’s Pilot Production Line in Marina, currently in its “mega-tent” at the Marina Airport, is designed to specifically help Joby learn how to manufacture and optimize its manufacturing processes so it is able to scale to larger volumes.
The aviation company has testing facilities, which include its integrated test lab and its flight-testing capabilities in Marina. With the groundbreaking of its new facility at the airport, Joby will substantially increase what it can build in its pilot manufacturing line.
The news of the third production prototype rolling off the pilot production line in Marina came as the company issued its Second Quarter 2024 Shareholder letter which highlighted what the company calls its “strong financial foundation,” as it maintained a strong balance sheet with $825 million in cash and short-term investments at the end of the second quarter.
According to the company, other second quarter 2024 highlights include the ramp-up of production as the company expects to have four aircraft in active flight test during the third quarter this year, with the second production prototype now in flight test and the third having just rolled off the production line. Joby’s certification process is in the fourth of five stages of type certification and is now 37% complete on the company side, with numerous test plans submitted and accepted during the quarter. Joby expects progress in the fourth stage to accelerate in the remainder of 2024.
On the international expansion front, Joby has applied for certification in Australia and signed a memorandum of understanding with Mukamalah, a wholly owned subsidiary of Saudo Aramco and operator of the world’s largest fleet of corporate aircraft, to introduce the Joby aircraft to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia via direct sales. Joby’s future technologies saw the flying of a first-of-its-kind, hydrogen-electric air taxi demonstrator 561 miles and acquired the autonomy division of Xwing, an industry leader in the development of autonomous technology for aviation.
