TL;DR
The software that lets an aircraft fly itself just picked up a bigger backer. The U.S. Air Force has raised its commitment to Joby's autonomous flight software to nearly $37 million and lifted the ceiling on the testing contract to $50 million, according to a secondary report. The work is framed as military cargo, but the same kind of software is the road to air taxis that need no one in the cockpit: electric aircraft that take off straight up from a pad and hop over traffic on their own. Every dollar a military customer spends maturing that brain is a dollar of testing the civilian version does not have to pay for alone. To see our odds on when people first ride a pilotless air taxi, and the timeline of breakthroughs that leads there, subscribe.
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