Joby Aviation is taking the wraps off the software system it has developed to support on-demand commercial air taxi services with its four-passenger eVTOL aircraft, which could enter service in 2025.
Called “ElevateOS,” the suite of software tools includes a flight-booking mobile app for customers, a planning tool for pilots, and an intelligent matching engine that connects available pilots, aircraft, and ground infrastructure resources for each journey.
“This is laying the foundation for what really is required in order to have an effective commercial service,” Bonny Simi, Joby’s president of operations, told AIN.
Today Joby announced that it has received FAA authorization to use the ElevateOS software suite for its commercial air taxi operations, which the company has been conducting for the past two years under a Part 135 air carrier certificate. With its eVTOL aircraft still in development, Joby has been flying a four-passenger Cirrus SR22 to simulate future eVTOL flights with real passengers since 2022. This early operational experience gave Joby the opportunity to exercise and refine its software systems.
“We've run an internal shuttle service for employees [and] we've matched employee passengers with similar routes to each other using our automation tools in the background,” Joby chief product officer Eric Allison told AIN. “We've actually taken payments from Joby team members as well as external customers for whole-airplane charter flights.”
Even before Joby obtained its Part 135 certification, it had already gained some operational experience via the 2021 acquisition of Uber Elevate, the air taxi division of popular ground transportation company Uber Technologies.
In 2019, Uber Elevate began experimenting with a helicopter booking service in New York City called Uber Copter, offering on-demand flights via Part 135 operator HeliFlite. Although Uber Copter was discontinued during the Covid-19 pandemic, the learnings from that experiment live on in Joby’s ElevateOS.
The ElevateOS software suite is “mature enough that we're able to use it as the core of our operations now going forward, and we’ll continue to iterate it and build new features into it,” Allison said. For example, Joby’s rider app will integrate with Uber’s popular ride-hailing app so eVTOL passengers can seamlessly book rides to and from vertiports.
Software Tailored for On-demand Flights
Although fleet management software and online booking platforms are prevalent across the commercial aviation industry, Joby’s software developers had to start from scratch to devise a new type of system for on-demand air taxi services.
“Airlines have software, but it's scheduled service, so they plan schedules way in advance—and you can see from what happened for Southwest Airlines when irregular operations happen, it becomes a challenge,” Simi said. “Our operations aren't scheduled, they're on demand, so [the software] has to be robust enough to manage all the various optimizations.”
The FAA does not actually certify these types of software systems, but the agency does require operators to show compliance with Part 135 rules using data and records that may be accessed through a software platform—whether it be ElevateOS or a simple Excel spreadsheet.
“They have a list of requirements that you have to prove. Is the pilot current? Is the pilot trained? How many hours have they flown today? All of that you have to be able to track,” Simi said. After Joby showed the FAA that ElevateOS could prove compliance with those requirements, the agency updated the operations specifications (OpSpecs) of Joby’s Part 135 certificate to include the new operating system, thereby authorizing Joby to use it, Simi explained.
Services Package Includes Software and Training
As a vertically integrated company, Joby plans to manufacture and operate its electric air taxis in the U.S. while selling the aircraft directly to operating partners overseas. For domestic operations, the company has partnered with Delta Air Lines to offer air taxi rides in major cities such as New York and Los Angeles.
While Joby is using ElevateOS for its own air taxi operations, the company is also making the software available to partners who purchase Joby’s aircraft—particularly foreign operators and military customers such as the U.S. Department of Defense, which has agreed to purchase up to nine aircraft from Joby.
Last month Joby signed a memorandum of understanding with Mukamalah, a subsidiary of oil and gas giant Saudi Aramco, covering the purchase of an unspecified number of Joby’s eVTOL aircraft that it plans to operate in Saudi Arabia.
“There's a lot of really interesting potential in regions where we won't be able to operate,” Allison said. “So, we've been thinking about, as we designed this software suite, how it can be used in these other contexts as well.”
The ElevateOS software will be part of a broader services package that Joby is making available to its operating partners, along with a six-week training program for eVTOL pilots.
To begin preparing its pilot workforce, Joby has begun building a flight training center in Marina, California, where the company has its pilot production line and flight-testing facility. The training facility will include two full-motion, level-C flight simulators that Joby developed in partnership with CAE.
The FAA has not yet finalized its proposed Special Federal Aviation Regulation (SFAR) for Integration of Powered Lift: Pilot Certification and Operations, which will establish training requirements for eVTOL pilots. In its proposal, the FAA suggested that commercial pilots of fixed-wing eVTOL aircraft should have a powered-lift category and instrument rating, plus an additional type rating for specific aircraft.
Regardless of the aircraft type, pilots operating Part 135 aircraft are required by the FAA to have at least 500 hours of flight experience under visual flight rules or 1,200 hours in instrument flight rules.
Joby expects its initial cadre of eVTOL pilots will consist of former military or airline pilots “who want to have a change of pace, be home every night and be part of something new,” Simi said. “That will cover our initial launch and into the first couple of years as we begin to scale, but as we begin ramping up, there's just no way there'll be enough pilots, and so we're already building out a pilot academy.”
Several U.S. Air Force pilots have already gone through Joby’s training program using simulators that Joby’s engineers have been using to develop the aircraft. Joby has also begun recruiting some pilots for initial operations, including in Dubai, Simi said.
Simi and Allison will hold a virtual briefing today (June 20) at 2 p.m. EDT to present the ElevateOS system to investors and detail the work that Joby has been doing to prepare for the launch of commercial air taxi services in 2025. The webcast will stream live on Joby’s investor relations website.