Your 1-Hour Commute Just Became 10 Minutes: These 10 States Are Getting Flying Taxis First

Forget a Bay Area road trip. How about a short flight?

BY MARIAPAULA GONZALEZ, EDITORIAL INTERN

The age of the flying car doesn’t seem far off anymore.

Joby Aviation showcased its vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOL, in a demo flight over San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge on Thursday. The small plane—14 meters wide, seven-and-a-half meters long, with six propellers and four passenger seats—could usher in a new mode of transportation for Bay Area commuters.

“The Bay Area is home to the world’s most innovative companies, including Joby, but it’s also an area with significant traffic and unique geographical barriers,” Joby Aviation founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt said in a Friday press release. “Our technology provides an opportunity to build on the immense potential of this region while protecting it for the next generation. By providing clean, quiet service with minimal infrastructure investment we are making flight an everyday reality for the community.”

Passenger flights could also roll out later this year in cities including New York, across Texas, and in states such as North Carolina, Florida, New Jersey, Oregon, Arizona, Oklahoma, Utah, and Idaho, with California potentially joining in the future, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Joby aims to price trips similar to an Uber Black, between $100 and $170.

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The demo flight comes as the federal government moves to fast-track the next generation of aircraft. On Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Department of Transportation unveiled eight pilot projects across 26 states designed to test eVOTLs, with Joby selected as one of the participants.

The program, created under an executive order from President Donald Trump, will allow companies and state agencies to run real-world trials of air taxis, cargo flights, and emergency response aircraft starting this summer.

In addition to potentially cutting hour-long car trips to 10 minutes or less, Joby’s eVTOLs also boast quiet operation. Bevirt told the Chronicle the electric aircrafts are designed to be fast, reliable, and silent, sounding more like “wind in the trees” than the “whop-whop-whop” of a helicopter, and they don’t require large new infrastructure.

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