you hear a lot about evtols these days for one that there are so many of these designs
in the works some say 600 joby aviation seems to have a jump on all of them
so far joby's s4 a four seat six rotor design has flown 150 statute miles non-stop and demonstrated
a 200 mile per hour top speed i flew a joby simulator in the company's washington dc office
over terrain that simulates that of the washington area so i'm going to give it a shot here it's got
uh six engines this is the power control here and this is the vertical control here so
um i've just had a a very brief uh lesson and i'm not helicopter rated so uh
got to cut me some slack here but uh here goes so to to get it into a hover you just pull back
on the vertical control and up you go and i'll hover it at 60 feet and i'll let go
and it'll stay there because it's fly-by-wire so so to go up some more you pull some more there's
80 feet let it go now and we want to go forward so we'll add some power and it'll stay at 80 feet
and i'm i don't have to control the vertical part anymore it's automatic it's flat by wire
okay now we want to go up so we'll raise the nose like five degrees
and that's a thousand feet per minute and i'll let go and it climbs that is cool that's fly by wire
okay so we're still climbing at 750 feet per minute out over the water okay so 104 knots
and then i'll bank it and it won't go any more than 45 degrees because again it's got envelope
protection and fly by wire is maintaining our um altitude and air speed so it's obviously it's real
easy to fly all right i'm gonna bank back around okay now i'm coming down keep slowing it down
i'll level it off it's 80 79. we need airport elevations 20 so i'm gonna try and bring it
into a hover at at 60 feet there's 60 feet and i'm going to let i'm going to let it stabilize there
let it go to i'm pulling back on the power okay there's
zero knots okay here we are hovered at 60.
pretty cool huh okay now i'm gonna land it just by pushing it down a little and it'll come down
and we're on the ground joby bought uber elevate with the idea of creating a ride sharing service
in the sky so the idea would be can you open up the joby app or even the uber app and on those
apps you'll have a choice to pick your flight and so you'll pick your flight and where you
want to go to the beginning of the journey a car will come to your house and drive you to
your nearest airport or your nearest teleport and then the aircraft will be there waiting for you
you'll get on you'll go on your flight relatively short 15 or 20 minute flight very close to where
you want to be ideally you're there and you can just walk to your location if not there's a car
waiting to finish your trip for you and that one button push is an end-to-end journey joby's been
quiet about all its progress but don't be surprised if it's the first to go to market
it has been a lot of work and effort to date we have been typically pretty quiet about the
progress we make but we're really excited to get this out there for the world tom horn aopa pilot
you