A Joby S4 prototype flies in Dubai. Many of the initial flights were conducted in temperatures exceeding 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Credit: Joby Aviation
Fifty kilometers southeast of Dubai in the desert of the Arabian Peninsula, one of Joby Aviation’s white S4 prototypes has been hovering and flying patterns since June 20, the company announced today.
The California startup is working with United Arab Emirates regulators toward the launch of electric air taxi passenger flights sometime next year, regardless of whether Joby has received a type certificate from FAA. The goal of this initial test campaign is to verify that the aircraft performs as expected in the region’s extreme dust and heat. Over the first week, temperatures exceeded 110 degrees Fahrenheit nearly every day, beating the average temperatures in the Mojave Desert, where Joby has conducted extensive flight test at Edwards Air Force Base.
The first week of UAE flights went well, Joby executive chairman Paul Sciarra told me in a video interview from Dubai. Thus far, the piloted flights have lasted up to 10 minutes, according to the FlightAware aviation tracking website. He showed me video taken during one of the flights, in which the aircraft is visibly shimmering in the heat as it soars low over orange-tinted dunes.
“We don’t expect to learn anything new, but these tests allow us to ensure that the operational performance we’ve seen in other places extends to this new geography, and it allows us to check the box on something like passenger comfort in 110-degree weather,” Sciarra said. “We’ve had a pilot in there, and he’s not dripping bullets. So far, so good on that front.”
• Related reading: How the UAE desert could pose a challenge for electric air taxis
Sciarra acknowledged that one of the biggest unknowns that Joby must evaluate is how the S4 performs in the extremely fine grain, flour-like dust and sand in the region. But he noted that no serious problems with dust intrusion were recorded during the Mojave flights, even with the tilt propeller joints and actuator motors on the forward nacelles.
“What people are thinking of is mechanical actuation, as opposed to electrical actuation,” he said, referring to the electric motors that tilt the propellers. “If you peek into our nacelles, you won’t see a lot of pumps and tubes and craziness in there. It’s very simplified architecture, and we haven’t seen any gumming up of the works on tilt actuation or other things.”
Going forward, Sciarra said Joby will gradually increase the duration, distance and complexity of flight patterns over the next several months.
As for the planned passenger service, Joby’s aim is to operate initially out of Dubai International Airport, ferrying passengers from and to hotels and tourism destinations, including the island of Palm Jumeirah, Dubai Marina and downtown Dubai. The trip from the airport to Palm Jumeirah, for example, is expected to take only 12 minutes compared to at least 30 minutes by car during rush hour.
In the meantime, Joby says it will continue building out the production lines at a new manufacturing plant in Dayton, Ohio, Sciarra said, while also increasing the cadence at its facility in Marina, California, to 25-50 aircraft per year.
“I think what’s important to note is that the FAA has been involved in the process of flight testing here in the UAE,” Sciarra said, “ and essentially the UAE regulators are taking the same playbook that FAA has developed and, you know, doing their own scoring.”
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