The Electric: Toyota Took a Pass on EVs. But it Has Bet $1 Billion on this Flying Car Company
Toyota Motors is one of the world’s most buttoned-up companies. But in 2017, an executive from the carmaker’s venture arm drove into the remote Santa Cruz, Calif., mountains to see a group of engineers living together in a 1960s-style commune. As he watched, they demonstrated a remote-controlled electric helicopter they predicted would usher in an age of air taxis for the masses.
Eight years later, Joby, now a publicly traded company, says it will launch commercial air taxi flights in 2026. The first flights will be in four Dubai “vertiports,” including at the city’s airport, downtown and marina. Later in the year, Joby plans to start operations in U.S. cities, such as New York and Los Angeles.
And behind the venture is Joby’s largest shareholder, the ordinarily ultracautious Toyota, which holds a 22% ownership stake and has invested nearly $1 billion in the startup.
Joby’s tight partnership with Toyota gives it access to the carmaker’s unparalleled manufacturing expertise—critical since the startup’s success depends on building its aircraft at scale. Elon Musk famously called this problem “production hell.” Numerous electric vehicle startups have failed to navigate this stage, so Joby is tying its future to Toyota, the avatar of modern manufacturing and the world’s leading car company by sales.
I visited Joby’s Marina, Calif., manufacturing facility and wrote a long feature about how electric air taxis are moving from the realm of science fiction to reality.
Investors have responded strongly to the arrival of these aircraft, known as electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOLs. Joby shares have surged 120% year to date, including 48% last week on the news that the company doubled production capacity in Marina. Later this summer, Joby plans to start production at a new plant in Dayton, Ohio, which will eventually pump out 40 aircraft a month.
Toyota’s largesse has bankrolled much of this expansion.
The four-passenger Joby aircraft looks definitively sci-fi, an intimidating combination of the insectlike body you would expect, topped by six helicopter-style rotors and wings. What fundamentally distinguishes these from today’s helicopters is their quiet, battery-powered motors. There is no scary whoop-whoop, and no dipping your head as you approach in fear of a decapitation.
CEO JoeBen Bevirt says that at first these flights won’t be cheap—he expects fares running about the same as Uber Black, which can cost roughly $150 or $170 from John F. Kennedy Airport to Manhattan. The price will come down, he expects, and Joby flights will compete directly with UberX, which is about half the Uber Black fare.
For Toyota, the size and intensity of the bet on Joby may seem surprising. But it makes sense if you’re thinking about survival amid a massive shift in how people move.
The Japanese company deliberately took a pass on EVs the last few years. Instead, it doubled down on hybrids, which it argued would be good enough for consumers, and it has largely ignored driverless technology. Meanwhile, Chinese EV makers have gobbled up market share in Asia and elsewhere.
Other EV laggards in the West are doing the same: Stellantis pledged to spend $370 million to help Joby rival Archer Aviation ramp up its manufacturing capacity. Porsche is helping Brazil’s Eve Air Mobility build its air taxi.
Geopolitics are aligning with these moves: Last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring electric air taxis and drones strategic industries, and ordering pilot programs to “maintain United States leadership in eVTOL flight.”
At the state level, Michigan, pivoting off Trump’s order, last week carved out a 40-mile air corridor in which eVTOL startups can test their aircraft, including a vertiport and charging infrastructure at the University of Michigan—an apparent first for the country; eVTOL companies generally don’t have large spaces for testing their aircraft.
Trump’s move followed a similar directive by Beijing, which even gave the new industry a name—the “low-altitude economy.” China is engaged in an all-of-government effort to dominate this economy: Six Chinese universities have announced fall undergraduate programs in low-altitude technologies, which also include drones and low-orbit satellites, and businesses have formed the China Low-Altitude Economic Alliance. Chinese electric air taxi developer EHang plans to begin the world’s first commercial eVTOL flights later this summer, with service in the cities of Guangzhou and Hefei.
Toyota is everywhere inside Joby. About 50 of its engineers are embedded in nearly every facet of Joby’s facilities. They heavily influence its production decisions, down to how workers place their tools on tables, and weigh in on the startup’s choice of suppliers.
I walked around the Marina plant with Eric Allison, Joby’s chief product officer. Allison and other senior Joby executives spoke of Toyota with extraordinary deference, saying in almost every conversation that Toyota played a central role in their plans. They cite the Japanese company’s culture, including acronyms like “5S,” a system of rigorous workplace rules.
The citation of Toyota’s acronyms seemed a bit cultish, though I can see why the Joby crew is embracing them, given how central manufacturing problems have been in the demise of other EV companies.
The Toyota hand goes pretty far: Overhead video cameras capture all of the workers’ moves. Toyota engineers review the videos later in Japan, where the company has built a close mock-up of the Marina facility.
“From one workstation to another, we would videotape and time every function, and then assess the effectiveness of every action, from which direction you put the scissors that someone’s going to access to how a handoff happens from one station to another,” Didier Papadopoulos, president of Joby and head of manufacturing, told me. “This is where I think the strength of Toyota and their decades of expertise has been phenomenal.”