Santa Cruz-based company Joby Aviation, which is developing an entirely electric air taxi for commercial passenger service, has achieved a significant milestone—flying a full-sized eVTOL aircraft prototype over 150 miles on a single charge, including energy-gobbling vertical take-off and landing phases.
In early July, the flight was completed at Joby’s Electric Flight Base in Big Sur, California. The aircraft, remote-piloted from the ground by the company’s Chief Test Pilot Justin Paines, took off vertically before transitioning to winged flight and completing 11 laps of a round-shaped circuit. After 77 minutes in the air, the aircraft landed vertically, covering a total distance of 154.6 statute miles (249 km), setting new records as the longest “eVTOL” flight.
Joby demonstrates that by using today’s commercially available lithium-ion batteries, such mile range figures are indeed possible. “While we still have plenty more testing to do, achieving this milestone is an important validation of our technology. In addition, I’m incredibly proud to have played a small part in what is, to our knowledge, the longest all-electric eVTOL flight performed to date,” said Paines.
eVTOLs require huge power density during the vertical lift flight phases and energy density to enable any decent range figure. This places extraordinary demands on batteries. Therefore, Joby will use a graphite anode and an 811 NMC cathode cell and believes that after lab testing, its battery packs will fly over 10K “expected nominal flight cycles” in the life of a production aircraft.
Jon Wagner, Joby Head of Powertrain and Electronics, explained, “Since the day I joined Joby four years ago. We’ve worked hard to maximize the energy efficiency of this aircraft and prove what we have always known to be possible with today’s battery technology. With the right cell chemistry and a lot of hard work across the entire engineering team, we’ve been able to create a remarkably efficient aircraft that can make the most of today’s commercially available batteries.”
However, it should be noted that this distance record was flown with a vacant cabin. In contrast, production versions will need to lift five passengers, including luggage, adding a significant amount of weight to the airframe, pushing the propulsion system harder.
It’s unclear when we will see fully crewed flights flying over our heads; eHang is already zooming people around in China, apparently unfettered by regulators, and Volocopter recently released footage of its first-ever crewed flight of a fully electric VTOL air taxi in the US. However, currently, most of the major players are still flying their aircraft via remote control. Meanwhile, REGENT’s seaglider takes a different approach, operating under maritime law to sidestep FAA certification entirely.
Watch Joby’s long-distance flight below.
