IT Blog

In February, serial inventor JoeBen Bevirt stood before a camera in a chilly Northern California field. Behind him was a strange flying contraption. It had wings like an airplane, but also six propellers pointing upward, like a giant multicopter drone.

Bevirt was announcing plans for his company, Joby Aviation, to go public. But more interesting than what the CEO said in the video was the fact that you could still hear him talk, even as those propellers spun up and the craft rose off the ground. Sounding like the rush of wind, the mild propeller noise was a world away from the deep, thumping sound of a helicopter.

Bevirt’s dream is to fill the skies with these electric aircraft, serving as flying taxis that zip four passengers at a time over urban congestion. And he aims to start operations by 2024. Doing that efficiently, at a scale that makes it economical, requires securing a lot of places to take off and land—in a lot of neighborhoods…