See the first video of Joby Aviation's electric air taxi

[MUSIC] What you're looking at is considered by many to be the most advanced electric air taxi on the planet. We've been talking about electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles for VTOL for quite a while now, but nobody could blame you if you've never heard of Joby aviation.They've been around since 2009. That's pretty much longer than any other player in the stakes. They've been flying under the radar for the most part. But they recently, finally, gave us a look, at what they've been working on. Joby released, two videos on a two Tube channel. The first one speaks for itself. It's just over one minute long, and shows the vehicle take off [MUSIC] Move to horizontal flight, then land. The second video is about two minutes of founder job and reverb, talking about the company's plans with the vehicle behind it. We'll get some more on that later. But the real highlight of this video is the end. About a minute and a half in you can see the rotors start to spin in the background. And about 10 seconds later We are one step closer to making this fantastic future real. We can't wait to welcome you on board. Thank you so much Sure. This was an opportunity to show the aircraft in action. But more significant than just flying was the lack of any real As you may have noticed the verb didn't have to raise his voice over the sound coming from right behind him. Now I didn't see a love mic like this one that I'm using anywhere on him. And while they could have been using a boom mic to record his audio. I'm gonna let my friend Brian Cooley demonstrate why that really wouldn't matter. [NOISE] Even miked up i cant really. Compete over the noise of this portable air compressor, and these are a lot quieter than a helicopter. Thanks Brian. And that lack of noise is really what makes air taxis so appealing, for urban transportation. It's not really practical to have helicopters running through residential neighborhoods,all the day and night. They're just too loud. [SOUND] Not to mention. I'm sure everyone has wanted to put on their cap, and sort of Superman all over the traffic. That's Joby's executive chairman, Paul Sciarra. I had a chance to talk with him about, why Joby felt, now was the right time, for its coming out party, so to speak. We'll get to that in just a minute. But first let's take a closer look at the aircraft. Powered by six electric motors both for the vertical takeoff and landing and for cruising seats five people including the pilot has a top speed of 200 miles per hour. Joby says it has a range of 150 miles Paul told me in these videos we're seeing here a pilot is controlling the aircraft from the ground. But the plan is to have pilots in the cockpit when the air taxi service is actually up and running Or pitches a little bit more Tesla versus a waiver. So get something out there that's differentiated in terms of the core vehicle, but it's operate in a very traditional way. And then stage and then step wise kind of move to a progressively more autonomous future. Jovi says it's completed more than 1000 successful test flights. But if that's the case, why are we just seeing a now? I mean, you could argue this is becoming a pretty crowded space. With a lot of players showing off their videos on YouTube and Instagram for years. We felt like we kind of were at a point where we're hitting the specifications that we think are really important for being able to deliver Commercial Service So now felt like the right time to tell a little bit more about the story about the vehicle, and about what it can enable for customers on the other side. Now, it's also probably worth noting that God is going public on the New York Stock Exchange with a company called reinvent technology partners. So that probably played a role in the timing as well. So what else does God have going for it? It's got a manufacturing deal with Toyota worth about $600 billion. And it also acquired a little company you may have heard of called Uber elevate. >.The next 10 years for us a lot about commercialization. So this was the group inside of Uber that was doing a market simulation, dynamic pricing, demand forecasting, as well as building some of the tools that allow for more seamless shifts between a multimodal journey so moving people cars, into aerial vehicles and then back into cars on the other. So. [BLANK_AUDIO] Now the questions that always seem to come up around these type of aircraft [MUSIC] Is around the regulatory red tape. Well, that's another place where Joby appears to have a leg up on the competition. They already agreed to certification terms with the FAA. Meaning Joby knows exactly the requirements that has to meet over the next few years of testing to get its aircraft certified for commercial flight. [MUSIC] Folks have been talking about flying currencies, buying cars for a long time. It's sort of been this Jetsons future. It's always been like five or 10 years away. Now, given where we stand on the technical development of the aircraft, given where we stand on the certification side of things, we've got an opportunity to bring this service and make it useful to people very, very soon. [MUSIC] Like I've said, [MUSIC] There are a lot of companies vying, to be the first to get commercial air taxis in the skies. But it's tough to argue that Joby isn't at least in the top few contenders, given how long it's been around and where it stands with the FAA. So now that these appear to be closer than ever. What do you think about the concept of urban air taxis? Do you think we'll actually be riding these to work, to school? Maybe even the bar? Lemme know in the comments below. If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to like and subscribe and follow me on Twitter. Thanks for watching. I'm Andy Altman, I'll see you in the future. [MUSIC]