MARINA, California — Air taxis are becoming a reality. And Joby Aviation will soon be making them right here in the Miami Valley.
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News Center 7’s John Bedell flew across the country with a News Center 7 photojournalist to get rare access to Joby Aviation’s facility in California’s Monterey Bay area. There, they got a first-hand look at workers building structural parts for prototype air taxis.
Joby Aviation is currently perfecting the building process that they’ll be doing on a much larger scale in Dayton.
Bedell got a look at the exact machinery they’ll have in the Miami Valley.
“This is basically a robot that can place individual pieces of carbon fiber continuous streams very, very precisely,” Joby Aviation Chief Product Officer, Eric Allison, said.
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Allison showed our team around the hangar where they build and inspect tons of parts for the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) certification process. Everything from the aircraft’s design to production, maintenance, pilot training, and the aircraft itself has to meet the FAA’s rigorous safety standards. All to make sure the aircraft are worthy of carrying paying passengers for trips of up to 100 miles.
In Dayton, Joby’s already started refurbishing the building they bought at the airport. As reported on News Center 7 at 5:00, they expect to start making air taxi parts in Dayton later this year with plans to expand production in the Miami Valley.
“That’s the vision ultimately: to be able to produce hundreds of aircraft a year out of the set of facilities that we stand up there in the Dayton area,” Allison said.
Bedell asked about getting inside the Dayton facility, but a Joby spokesperson said it’s not the right time but they’ll stay in touch as the work going on there progresses.
Joby also told Bedell that when they first go to market with these air taxis, they plan to focus on launching in big markets like Los Angeles and New York. Still, they think there’s potential all around the country and the world for this technology to impact daily travel.
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