Joby to bring back Elevate Summit formerly hosted by Uber

Gathering will provide an open forum for the electric rotorcraft industry to share its vision for cargo delivery and passenger travel, Joby says

California-based Joby Aviation said today it will host the Elevate Summit, formerly hosted by Uber, on Oct. 12 and 13 in New York City.

Joby, a leader in development of eVTOLs, or electrical vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, said the event will allow attendees “to envision a near future in which quiet, electric, emissions-free aerial mobility opens up new transportation possibilities in urban areas.”

Joby bought Uber’s vertical flight division, previously known as Uber Elevate, in December 2020. Before that, Uber had hosted three Elevate summits about the eVTOL industry, the last one in June 2019 in Washington, D.C.

“We launched the Elevate Summit five years ago to provide an open forum for this new industry to come together and embrace a shared vision of the future,” Eric Allison, head of product at Joby and formerly head of Elevate at Uber, said in a press release.

The 2019 event featured an address by then-FAA Acting Administrator Dan Elwell, who noted at the time that the agency had granted the first air carrier certification to Alphabet’s Wing Aviation, a commercial drone operator, to carry out a pilot delivery program in rural Virginia.

The 2022 event will be held at Duggal Greenhouse in Brooklyn Navy Yard, the first time the summit will be in New York. Previous summits had more than 1,000 attendees apiece, according to Joby.

Joby announced on March 24 that it had resumed test flights with its all-electric prototype passenger aircraft after pausing such flights in February to investigate the crash of an older prototype that was flying with no one aboard.