Joby Aviation has formally applied for its aircraft to be certified for use in Australia. Joby's application to Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) for the validation of an FAA type certificate builds on a bi-lateral agreement between the US regulator and CASA, and it lays the groundwork for the introduction of quiet, emissions-free air taxis in Australia.

“We're incredibly excited about the potential for air taxis to offer new and more sustainable ways to travel around Australia's global cities,” says founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt. “With commercial powered-lift operations already considered in CASA's regulatory frameworks, we're pleased to be working with Australian authorities using a regulatory path to market that is actively being pursued by numerous countries around the world.”

Joby's electric air taxi is designed to carry a pilot and four passengers at speeds of up to 200mph, offering high-speed mobility with a fraction of the noise produced by helicopters and zero operating emissions.

To date, Joby has completed more than 33,000 miles of all-electric flight with full-scale prototype aircraft and, in November 2023, became the first electric air taxi company to fly in a major US city, taking off from the Downtown Manhattan Heliport in New York and demonstrating its aircraft's quiet acoustics for an audience including Mayor Eric Adams, who announced the city's intention to electrify the heliport.

Type certification is a multi-year process that sees a company undertake rigorous testing and documentation across each aircraft system to prove the aircraft meets safety standards and is ready for commercial operations. Joby is the first electric air taxi developer to have its FAA certification basis published in the US Federal Register, and is also the first company to complete the first, second and third of five stages of the FAA type certification process required for commercial service.

Joby has also applied to have its FAA type certificate, once received, validated by the Japan Civil Aviation Bureau and the United Kingdom's Civil Aviation Authority.

In June 2024, the company received FAA authorisation to use a suite of software tools developed in-house called ElevateOS, designed to enable high-tempo, on demand air taxi operations. Joby has been actively developing and testing these software tools in-house since acquiring Uber Elevate, the air taxi division of Uber in 2021. In 2019, Uber Elevate launched and ran UberCopter, the world's first on demand, multi-modal air taxi service, using traditional helicopters that were bookable via the Uber app.

Joby is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and has raised more than $2 billion of funding to date, including investments from Toyota, Delta Air Lines, SK Telecom, Uber and Baillie Gifford.