MOBILITY

A Jobial Affair

Joby is the first US flying car company to bring its talents to the public markets. 

This morning, Joby SPAC’d, taking the preferred route of pre-revenue deeptech players everywhere. The 12-year-old-startup now has ~$1.6 billion in its war chest, following a reverse merger with Reinvent Technology Partners, led by LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Zynga cofounder Mark Pincus, and investor Michael Thompson. 

While we’re here: “Flying car” is a bit of a misnomer. Along with other soon-to-be-public players, Joby is focused on electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.   

Similar to unidentified aerial phenomena…

...eVTOLs are unlike anything that came before. They take off like Luke Skywalker (vertically) and leverage electric propulsion systems, promising a still-sci-fi form of urban mobility, zero-emissions flying, and a quieter noise profile than helicopters. 

eVTOLs have benefitted from many breakthroughs, including advances in: energy density, lightweight materials like carbon fiber, 3D printing, and Moore’s Law (enabling enough onboard compute).

Paul Sciarra, Joby’s executive chairman (and Pinterest cofounder), told us Joby is transitioning from “product design and development to a company that’s super focused on commercialization.” For the last decade, Joby tinkered with “electric motors, battery pack design, aerodynamic analysis”...the works, he said.

Phase two 

Joby’s five-seat, tilt-rotor, piloted prototypes have completed 1,000+ test flights. And this July, Joby announced a test-flight of 154.6 miles on a single charge (avg. speed = 120.5 mph). 

Joby is targeting commercial service for 2024. Between now and then, it must: 

1. Receive regulatory approval. The company has already agreed to FAA certification conditions. Sree Palle, a manager at FEV Consulting, told the Brew, “In our view, Joby is ahead of other players in this space.”
2. Go from prototyping to volume production.
3. Develop an aerial ridesharing app with adequate supply on its network (Joby’s acquisition of Uber Elevate may help here).  
4. Stay solvent. 

Before eVTOLs take flight in large numbers, Palle said, other systems must be developed: aircraft traffic management, operations management, urban air mobility corridors, communications protocols, and more. 

Zoom out: Markets have Joby pegged as a slight favorite in the nascent aerial, all-electric horse race. Lilium and Archer Aviation, both also targeting commercial service in 2024, have announced SPAC deals that would value them at $3.3 billion and $1.7 billion, respectively. Joby went out of the gate at $4.5 billion today.

By 2030, Palle says his team expects 1,500+ eVTOL units will be sold per year, with use cases ranging from emergency response to air taxis. Initially, he predicts, the taxis will be operated at a price between $3–$9 per mile, per passenger.—RD 

EV

Where the wild chargers are

Over the weekend, Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess experienced firsthand a common frustration for electric vehicle owners: During a drive from Austria to Northern Italy, the vacationing exec had a hard time finding reliable places to charge his EV. 

The problem isn’t unique to Diess, nor is it unique to the highway connecting Austria and Italy—it’s a well-known obstacle to US EV adoption, too. A new report from Mobilyze.ai, an EV charging analytics firm, provides a detailed look at where the US stands on this challenge.

The headline figure: Just under 10% of those living in the top 50 US cities (~4.6 million people, in total) live within a 5-minute walk from an EV charger.

• The figure varies quite a bit city-to-city—San Francisco (of course) has the highest rate of access at 25%, while less than 1% of Oklahoma City, Memphis, El Paso, and Indianapolis residents live within a 5-minute walk of a charger.
• Even today, with relatively low rates of EV ownership, Mobilyze estimates that the US has 30,000–90,000 fewer chargers than it currently needs. 

Looking ahead…generally, white people and more affluent people have greater access to public EV chargers than people of color and lower-income people. To ensure equitable access to charging infrastructure, Mobilyze CEO David Keith told us stakeholders should build chargers based on need, versus focusing only on EV ownership rates and/or willingness of a given site (e.g., a Target) to host the charger. 

Click here to read more about the allocation of EV chargers.—DM 

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DRONES

How to make people watch a baseball game

Step #1: Schedule MLB game between the Yankees and White Sox. 
Step #2: Build a special venue in Iowa replicating Field of Dreams.  
Step #3: Add 5G drones into the mix. 
Step #4: ?
Step #5: Profit. 

Dear reader, believe it or not, all of this is happening tomorrow. Or, at least, steps 1–3 are. 

Fresh off successfully installing 5G modules into its 60-mph aircraft, the Drone Racing League is bringing its 2019 champion pilot to the MLB “Field of Dreams.” He’ll be the cinematographer for the night, with DRL’s drone connected to T-Mobile’s 5G network. 

• The 5G drone can stream directly to the internet, giving viewers sweeping angles and real-time shots of the game they won’t have seen before. 
• DRL and T-Mobile have partnered to bring this new form of live, aerial cinematography to future games and events sponsored by the carrier. 

Big picture: While 5G is full of gimmicky marketing—and you’ll probably see magenta drones in T-Mobile ads soon—this is a new, real use case. 

5G drones won’t directly affect many content creators, since few are first-person view (FPV) drone pilots. But it could change how we experience live events and sports. Traditional filming rigs can’t capture the shots that a speedy drone and skilled pilot can.—RD

BITS & BYTES

Stat: Starship Technologies is expanding to four new college campuses this fall. The sidewalk robot startup’s fleet of 1,000+ has made 1.5+ million deliveries at nearly 20 US colleges so far. 

Quote: “Proficient in more than a dozen programming languages, Codex can now interpret simple commands in natural language and execute them on the user’s behalf.”—OpenAI on its newly released code-generating algorithm, Codex

For your ears: Ryan talked about all of you, electrification, driverless robotaxis, hydrogen drones, and more on the Future of Mobility podcast. Listen on: Spotify | Apple | Google

Developers, assemble: Auth0 + Okta Developer Day is happening on August 24. You’ll discover how the identity space is evolving, learn best practices in privacy and security, and gain insights from peers and keynote speakers. Register for free here.*

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WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Coinbase pulled in $2.2 billion in Q2 revenue, quite a bit higher than what analysts were expecting. 
• Poly Network, a cross-chain cryptocurrency protocol, lost at least $611 million in a hack. 
• Motional is expanding AV testing to LA and opening its first Bay Area office. 
• Amazon Web Services landed a $10 billion NSA contract, and in shades of the infamous JEDI kerfuffle, Microsoft is contesting the decision.
• SoftBank has put a moratorium on investing in China.
• Chevy previewed the all-electric Silverado. 

TECHS AND BALANCES

The Senate crypto tax brouhaha has reached a nonconclusion: After several days of back-and-forth between two groups of senators, the infrastructure bill’s controversial crypto tax provision went unchanged.

• The senators came to an eleventh-hour compromise, but Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) blocked it from going to a vote (he did this because his own amendment was blocked). 

What’s next? The House will consider the infrastructure bill in the fall, when we can expect the crypto world to again push for changes to the tax provision. 

FROM THE CREW

ICYMI, here's how to enter this week’s giveaway: Refer at least five of your tech savvy friends to subscribe to Emerging Tech Brew using your custom referral link. 

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ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• Twitter just led the first-ever "bug bounty" for AI bias
• Crypto has cross-border promise
• Biden’s EV goals meet reality