TL;DR
An air taxi that could turn a drive of an hour or more into a 10-minute hop (as in Archer's Bay Area flights) has one more box checked. Joby Aviation, one of the two U.S. front-runners in electric air taxis, says it has finished the flight tests the FAA watches and counts toward its license, and that 17 of its aircraft are now on the production line. That comes from the company's own Nov. 4 results, which put Joby in the last of five certification stages and give no date for the final certificate. The same report says Joby's flights under a federal pilot program have reached Florida, and that one of its aircraft flew what Joby believes is the first fully autonomous civilian flight across the U.S. Our odds that people can pay for an air-taxi ride in a U.S. city: 92% that it happens, likely by 2028. To see the full odds on certification, paid rides and pilotless flights, and the timeline of breakthroughs that leads there, subscribe.
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