In a monumental move for the advanced air mobility sector, Joby Aviation has acquired Xwing, a company developing autonomous flight control systems. With its piloted, four-passenger eVTOL air taxi progressing toward certification and service entry in 2025, Joby is already making plans for a subsequent iteration of the aircraft that could transport passengers without pilots on board.
While Joby appears to be at the forefront of the wave of start-ups looking to certify eVTOL air taxis next year, Xwing has also been leading the pack when it comes to certifying autonomous flight technologies. Last year Xwing became the first company to formally begin the FAA certification process for a large uncrewed aerial system (UAS)—a Cessna 208B Caravan utility airplane retrofitted with its “Superpilot” autonomous flight control system.
Xwing has been flying autonomous aircraft experimentally since 2020, and the company’s Caravan testbed achieved its first fully autonomous gate-to-gate mission in April 2021. To date the company has completed at least 250 fully autonomous flights and 500 auto-landings.
“Xwing's technology, which was designed to be platform-agnostic, will be advanced by Joby's growing autonomy team,” a Joby spokesperson told AIN. “This team will focus on increasing automation and following an autonomy roadmap for the Joby aircraft, while also exploring opportunities for further partnership with the Department of Defense on technology development.”
Both Joby and Xwing have been awarded DoD contracts for the development of their respective technologies. Joby recently delivered the first of up to nine eVTOL air taxis it has agreed to deliver to the U.S. Air Force under its $131 million Afwerx Agility Prime contract. Meanwhile, Xwing has been participating in the Air Force’s Agile Flag 24-1 Joint Force exercise, during which it completed daily flights to demonstrate the safe integration of autonomous aircraft in the National Airspace System.
“Several Department of Defense contracts are expected to transfer to Joby as part of the transaction, while the newly acquired technology and team will support existing Joby contracts with the DoD,” the Joby spokesperson said. “In addition, we will explore additional opportunities with the DoD in the future, utilizing Xwing technology.”
It's not yet clear whether Joby will maintain Xwing's office in San Francisco and hangar in nearby Concord, California. Joby has a flight testing and pilot production facility in Marina, California, and several other offices in the Golden State as well as in Washington, D.C.
“The exceptionally talented Xwing team has not only made unparalleled progress on the development and certification of vision systems, sensor fusion, and decision-making autonomous technologies, but they’ve also successfully demonstrated the real-life application of their technology, flying hundreds of fully autonomous flights in the national airspace,” said Joby founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt. “We’re honored to bring them onboard at Joby as we continue on our mission of building a next generation aviation company.”
The Superpilot enables aircraft to fly autonomously using a combination of software and hardware, including sensors, cameras, radar, and LIDAR systems that provide complete situational awareness. Xwing intends to initially certify the technology for remotely piloted cargo operations. To that end, it strategically acquired three air cargo carriers—San Antonio Air Charter, Martinaire Aviation, and AirPac Airlines—to gather the real-world data its engineers need to develop and refine the Superpilot.
“Xwing’s goal of connecting communities with clean and affordable autonomous flight aligns closely with Joby’s long-term vision,” said Xwing president and chief technology officer Maxime Gariel. “For the past seven years, our team has broken barriers to advance aviation autonomy. Now, as we join forces with the leading electric air taxi developer, I can’t imagine a better home for the Xwing team to realize our shared vision.”
According to Joby, the acquisition of Xwing builds upon the manufacturer’s 2021 acquisition of Inras, an Austrian start-up specializing in radar sensor technology. “Xwing’s comprehensive approach and expertise in perception technology, system integration, and certification is expected to benefit both near-term piloted operations for Joby as well as fully autonomous operations in the future,” Joby said in a company statement.
“We believe that any tools that help reduce the burden on pilots through automation will be beneficial for Joby's near-term piloted operations,” Joby's spokesperson told AIN. “These advancements can enhance pilot efficiency, reduce workload and streamline flight operations.”
Although Xwing has primarily focused on developing the Superpilot for legacy airplanes such as the Caravan, the company does have some previous experience working with uncrewed eVTOL aircraft. In 2020, Xwing partnered with Bell to demonstrate its detect-and-avoid software on the Bell Autonomous Pod Transport 70 (APT 70) vehicle as part of a NASA program dedicated to the integration of UAS in the National Airspace System.
While executives from several eVTOL start-ups have publicly floated the idea of introducing pilotless versions of their respective air taxis, there’s only one company in the U.S. that has made any tangible progress on that idea: Wisk Aero, a Boeing subsidiary. (China issued the world’s first and only type certificate for an autonomous eVTOL aircraft to EHang in October 2023.)
Wisk has already begun building the first full-scale prototype of its four-passenger air taxi and plans to begin flying it later this year. Because the FAA has no clearly defined path to certification for autonomous passenger-carrying aircraft, Wisk officials have been reluctant to offer an anticipated timeline for certification but have said they hope to have the aircraft in service by the end of this decade.
With Joby’s piloted aircraft on track to enter service next year, Wisk may not represent significant competition with Joby for now. However, Wisk did recently partner with Archer Aviation, another California-based start-up developing an eVTOL air taxi that could enter service around the same time as Joby’s aircraft. Archer aims to integrate Wisk’s autonomous flight technologies into future versions of its Midnight eVTOL air taxi.