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Joby Aviation is still a year away from commercially launching its electric air hack design for urban environments , but the startup is already looking toward its next chapter : intercity flying , power by hydrogen .
To get the conversation start with regulator and demonstrate hydrogen ’s capabilities , Joby enjoin TechCrunch that it completed a 523 - mile test flight with a H - electric image aircraft — one of its eVTOLs ( electric perpendicular takeoff and landing fomite ) that the startup outfit with a liquid H fuel cell and hydrogen - electric propulsion organisation .
Today , Joby Aviation’seVTOLs are being work up to enrapture people and good little aloofness within cities or from cities to airports . power by batteries , the aircraft have 100 miles of range . H acts as a range - extender , opening the door to a regional use of goods and services case , according to Joby .
“ This is a landmark moment for aviation , ” JoeBen Bevirt , CEO of Joby , told TechCrunch . “ If you want to journey long distances , or you want to stay in the air for tenacious periods of time , H - electric is a game changer . ”
The employment of atomic number 1 to big businessman vehicles has been hotly contest for years . Hydrogen is technically a zero emission fuel seed because it only emit urine when in habit . But it ’s expensive and energy intensive to give rise , and most of today ’s stock is made using fossil fuel . Green hydrogen , which is create via renewable energy source , has yet to descale importantly .
However , recent private and public investing into green H , including an$8 billion H hub programwithin Biden ’s Inflation Reduction Act , is make the sector new life . And Bevirt says “ air power has the potential to be a massive consumer of gullible hydrogen . ”
“ The amazing thing about hydrogen is it ’s three times light than jet fuel per social unit of energy . It ’s 100 times lighter than today ’s battery per unit of measurement of vigor , ” Bevirt said . “ And with H fuel cells … we’re capable to convert the chemic Energy Department in hydrogen into actuation twice as efficiently . ”
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Joby has been restfully arrange the stage to carry out hydrogen into its eVTOLs . In 2021 , Joby acquired H2Fly , a German hydrogen aviation startup . Last year , H2Fly demonstrated its own piloted flight with a liquid hydrogen - powered aircraft , and now , Joby has used that same technology to power a H reading of its eVTOL . Bevirt say TechCrunch that the fuel cell system that H2Fly designed and build was able to power the six electric motor on the Joby aircraft and recharge its batteries in flight .
Joby is still very much in the presentation phase , but when the inauguration is quick to start testing regional flights , it ’ll be able-bodied to integrate hydrogen - power eVTOLs into its current system with minimum fiscal disbursal , accord to Bevirt .
“ We take this barrage fire electrical aircraft we ’ve build , and we take 90 % of the scheme and components that are in it , and we augment it with a hydrogen - galvanising range extender , ” say Bevirt . “ And now , with a very small incremental investment , we can use the same vertiports , the same pilot and automobile mechanic and the Elevate operating arrangement , which does all the back - remainder logical system . ”
ElevateOS , which is core to Joby ’s be after air taxi armed service , is a nod to Uber ’s Elevate air taxi business , which the ride - hail giantsold to Joby in 2020 . That sales event included a stage set of software program tools that enable on - need mobility not unlike hail an Uber ride . And in fact , Joby ’s app will be integrate with Uberand Delta Airlines , the startup ’s launch partner .
“ So whether you pick up the Joby app or the Uber app , all of a sudden , it pass you the opportunity to not just go across town , but you’re able to go anywhere in a area , ” aver Bevirt .
Some investor are n’t so positive .
Cyrus Sigari , conscientious objector - founder and managing cooperator of VC Up . Partners , said that while he ’d lie with to see a hydrogen - power eVTOL come to biography , investors “ would need to see a very compelling technical and business concern case to follow investment in the category . ”
One of the large challenges , he said , lies with the base .
“ The industry is already scratch up its top dog figuring out how to support battery electric aircraft with charging substructure at aerodrome , ” Sigari told TechCrunch . “ Adding H weft stations into that equivalence will present even more challenge . ”
He remark the recentshutdown of Universal Hydrogen , one of the more prominent players in the atomic number 1 space for powering traditional airlines , has get to light just how hard all of this is .
When asked about the hydrogen fill up stations , Bevirt was n’t unsettle .
“ We do n’t expect that to be a pregnant impediment to the rollout , ” Bevirt told TechCrunch . “ We are in conversations with lots of airport across the nation and around the world that are putting in liquid hydrogen fueling substructure . ”
And even as Universal Hydrogen had to shutter because it was unable to raise enough funds to stay , ZeroAvia signed a large deal with American Airlines , which institutionalize to the leverage of 100 atomic number 1 - power engine .
Joby did n’t provide a timeline for when it plans to launch hydrogen - power eVTOLs , but the destination with its demonstration flight is to afford the floor to treatment with unripened hydrogen producers and regulator .
“ This is an authoritative moment where we can begin the talks with regulators , both here in the U.S. and around the populace , to say the engineering is here , the technology is quick and it ’s fourth dimension to put the pieces in place to license this , ” say Bevirt .
