22 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY SEPTEMBER 4-10, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com bemoaning that California’s leaders didn’t do enough to match or exceed the incentives offered by Ohio, the place Joby ended up choosing. Still, Joby reiterated its desire to continue operations in California. It received a nearly $10 million grant from California’s Office of Business and Economic Development to grow its facilities in Marina, and in mid2024, broke ground on an expanded manufacturing facility. The facility was completed in July 2025 and doubled Joby’s footprint at the airport, now at 435,500 square feet, and is expected to pump out 24 aircraft a year. Joby proudly lists its accomplishments (online and in its Marina lobby, with stacks of “yearbooks” to browse through), showing that it’s going further than most startup companies ever do. In 2020, Joby became the first eVTOL company to receive airworthiness approval from the U.S. Air Force to conduct testing on government bases—it delivered its first aircraft to Edwards Air Force Base in California in 2023 and announced it planned to deliver two more to MacDill Air Force Base. The partnerships are many over the years: Toyota Motor Corporation, which is investing $500 million and time into helping Joby develop its manufacturing processes; Virgin Atlantic, to help launch service in the United States and United Kingdom; and Uber, to integrate aerial ridesharing service into the popular app; among others. In a major milestone, Joby completed its first “full transition” flight with a pilot onboard in April 2025—moving from vertical takeoff to horizontal flight. Like the propellers that power its aircraft, things are humming along at Joby as it meets its goals. But one of its most significant goals remains in progress. On a Wednesday afternoon, Eric Allison, Joby’s chief product officer, leads a small group of people through one of the company’s manufacturing facilities at the Marina airport. He advises the group to stay within the green lines as they walk deep into the facility—otherwise, they will have to don personal protective equipment. Indeed, dozens of workers are wearing white lab coats and safety goggles as they cut carbon fiber composite material to fit into molds while others sit at workstations, viewing computer monitors that are filled with rows of data. The hum of giant robotic equipment conducting various tasks is also ever-present. One robotic arm is spraying a panel with water at a high-pressure, testing to see if any defects, such as air bubbles within the layers of material, are exposed. Allison says Toyota has been instrumental with its vast knowledge of manufacturing, helping Joby refine and scale its process as it prepares for what it projects will be a high demand for its aircraft. That process is even down to the precise placement of workers’ tools at their stations, according to a Joby report to shareholders. Most of the parts that are currently being put together, such as wings, propeller blades and more, will be used to construct the five aircraft that will be tested by Federal Aviation Administration pilots. Known as Type Inspection Authorization testing, FAA pilots will test the aircraft themselves for the first time after years of reviewing documents and other things during the long certification process. It’s a big deal, Allison says. “It means a lot that the FAA is willing to put their test pilots in there,” he says. “It means you have passed a certain bar of maturity. It’s so critical because it shows they have confidence and you have confidence as well.” Joby is targeting those test flights to take place in early 2026. For now, regular test flights, whether remotely or with Joby’s pilots onboard, happen about four times a day at the Marina airport. One such flight in August stands out. In a first for the company, a piloted Joby aircraft took off from the Marina Municipal Airport and touched down at Monterey Regional Airport, taking 12 minutes to do so. Five of those minutes were in a hold pattern as it waited for air traffic spacing. In a long process of incremental steps, the flight was a big one in the A Joby aircraft on the runway at the Marina Municipal Airport after a remote test. Inside one of Joby’s manufacturing facilities at the Marina Municipal Airport, workers assemble parts of an aircraft that will be used for future testing by the Federal Aviation Administration. Pieces of carbon fiber are put together and laminated. Large robotic equipment also complete tasks under supervision of workers.
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