The $100 Cab Ride Has a Challenger
A taxi from Midtown Manhattan to JFK today runs about $100 and takes anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours, depending on traffic. Paul Sciarra, executive chairman of Joby Aviation, says that same trip will soon take less than 10 minutes — at altitude — and eventually cost about the same.
That is not a pitch deck. This summer, federally sanctioned pilot projects across the United States are letting Joby and several competitors begin carrying cargo, and then passengers, in real-world tests.
What the Aircraft Actually Does
Joby's vehicle is an eVTOL — electric vertical takeoff and landing. Six electric rotors lift it vertically, then tilt sideways to propel it forward. It carries four passengers and a pilot up to 100 miles at altitudes as low as 1,000 feet, roughly the height of the Chrysler Building, while generating a fraction of the noise of a conventional helicopter.
The Santa Cruz, Calif.-based company carries a market cap of $7.6 billion and counts Toyota, Uber, and Delta Air Lines among its backers. It is preparing real-world tests in New York, New Jersey, Texas, and Florida this year. Sciarra expects to begin noncommercial passenger tests in the fall or winter.
Rival Archer Aviation, headquartered in San Jose with a market cap of $3.7 billion and United Airlines as an investor, is targeting commercial passenger operations in time for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. CEO Adam Goldstein notes that L.A. is well-suited for air taxis because residents make frequent short trips — often under 20 miles — that can take over an hour by car.
The Federal Framework
The Trump administration's Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing and Advanced Air Mobility Integration Pilot Program — EIPP — is a three-year program that allows selected companies and states to test eVTOLs before obtaining full FAA certification, provided the aircraft are actively going through that process.
Beta Technologies, backed by Amazon and GE Aerospace, completed the first EIPP flights in Maryland and Virginia on July 10. The Vermont-based company is testing in seven of eight announced pilot projects, spanning 26 states. Wisk Aero, a Boeing subsidiary focused on fully autonomous eVTOLs, will test its aircraft in a Texas EIPP project.
The government's announcement of the pilot program included a clip from The Jetsons. The real machinery is less whimsical — and, according to Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Andres Sheppard, potentially safer than a traditional helicopter. He notes that eVTOLs carry multiple independently powered rotors, eliminating the single-point-of-failure risk of a conventional helicopter's one overhead rotor.
CEO Times Read
The market has already voted: $7.6 billion for Joby, $3.7 billion for Archer, and strategic capital from Toyota, Delta, United, Amazon, and GE Aerospace. That is not speculative enthusiasm — that is industry supply chains placing long bets on a new axis of transportation.
The EIPP framework deserves credit. Rather than burying innovation under a decade of pre-certification red tape, the administration built a structured on-ramp: test first, certify in parallel, let the data speak. That is what limited, rules-based regulation looks like when it works. If the flight tests deliver, American cities could have a private-sector solution to urban congestion that no highway project or transit bond has ever managed to provide — and the taxpayer did not have to build a single mile of track to get there.
