Joby Aviation, a next-generation aviation company, has successfully flown a first-of-its-kind hydrogen-electric air taxi demonstrator 523 miles, with water as the only by-product. The aircraft, which takes off and lands vertically, builds on Joby’s successful battery-electric air taxi development programme and demonstrates the potential for hydrogen to unlock emissions-free regional journeys that don’t require a runway.
The landmark test flight, believed to be the first forward flight of a vertical take-off and landing aircraft powered by liquid hydrogen, was completed last month using a converted Joby pre-production prototype battery-electric aircraft fitted with a liquid hydrogen fuel tank and fuel cell system. It landed with 10% of its hydrogen fuel load remaining.
Joby’s hydrogen-electric demonstrator is part of the company’s future technology programme and is the result of several years of collaboration between a small team at Joby and H2FLY, Joby’s wholly owned subsidiary based in Stuttgart, Germany. The converted aircraft previously completed more than 25,000 miles of testing as a battery-electric aircraft at Joby’s base in Marina, CA.
Using the same airframe and overall architecture as Joby’s core battery-electric aircraft, this demonstrator features a liquid hydrogen fuel tank, designed and built by Joby, which stores up to 40 kilograms of liquid hydrogen, alongside a reduced mass of batteries. Hydrogen is fed into a fuel cell system, designed and built by H2FLY, to produce electricity, water and heat. The electricity produced by the hydrogen fuel cell powers the six electric motors on the Joby aircraft, with the batteries providing additional power primarily during take-off and landing.
Joby’s H2FLY team used similar technology to complete another record-breaking flight in September 2023, when they flew the world’s first piloted flight of a conventional liquid hydrogen-electric aircraft using their fuel cell technology.
As part of Joby’s wider commitment to leading the way in the development of new aviation technologies, it recently acquired Xwing Inc., an industry leader in the development of autonomous technology for aviation. Xwing has been flying autonomous aircraft since 2020, with 250 fully autonomous flights and more than 500 auto-landings completed to date, using the Superpilot software it developed in-house.
Joby plans to start commercial operations as soon as 2025, using its battery-electric air taxi. The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and has raised more than US$2 billion of funding to date, including investments from Toyota, Delta Air Lines, SK Telecom, Uber and Baillie Gifford.
