Joby Aviation proudly presented the prototype of an air taxi to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for the IPO last August
Quelle: Bloomberg/Michael Nagle
An unmanned model of the US company Joby crashed during a test flight. Such accidents depress the stock price. But they are also a warning for German competitor Lilium. Is the air taxi industry promising us too much?
AWhen the electric air taxi provider Joby Aviation went public in August, the US provider boasted that it had already carried out well over 1,000 test flights. A Joby model will therefore probably be the first to receive approval for commercial operation, according to the stock exchange prospectus. But now there is a serious setback.
One of the two Joby prototypes crashed unmanned during a speed test in California. “There were no injuries,” says Joby in a brief statement to the financial markets.
The flight data showed that the prototype crashed at a speed of more than 435 kilometers per hour and thus flew significantly faster than the announced top speed of 200 miles per hour or 322 km / h, US media reports.
Joby probably explored the limits of the model with its six rotors and wanted to prove the safety margins required by the approval authorities. The start-up itself declared a week ago that qualification flights for the US Air Traffic Control Authority (FAA) are now beginning.
The Joby crash shows the challenges facing the E-Luftaxi scene before the models can be approved for commercial use. The regulatory authorities in the USA and Europe require that the flights with the VTOL aircraft are at least as safe as with a passenger plane. This has to be proven in practice. Only a flight test shows whether the simulations and calculations on the ground prove themselves in reality.
Just a few days before the crash, Joby announced that Japan’s largest airline group ANA and Toyota would be cooperating with the start-up in the future in the area of feeder flight services – proof of the developing market for e-air taxis.
More than 100 startups
Well over a hundred start-ups and established companies such as Airbus, Boeing or Embraer are striving to enter the future market worldwide, but only a few are already testing prototypes in flight.
In addition to Volocopter, the Joby competitors in Germany include the young German company Lilium, which will carry out its test flights in southern Spain and no longer at the company headquarters just outside Munich. There is more uninhabited terrain for long-haul flights and better weather.
After a prototype caught fire on the ground in early 2020, Lilium started test flights again last year – but not yet with the future model variant, which is scheduled to fly in commercial use in 2024.
Lilium went public on Nasdaq in September 2021, just weeks after Joby. This enabled Joby and Lilium to collect hundreds of millions of capital for further development. But they are now also obliged to more publicity if something goes wrong.
The crash of the Joby model promptly caused a price slide. Joby stock went public in August at just over $10. A rollercoaster ride in the share price followed, but ultimately the share came under increasing pressure. Most recently, it was listed at under $4.80. Lilium shares have also fallen from around ten dollars when they were first listed to around four dollars.