Joby Aviation this week relaunched the annual Elevate Summit previously staged by Uber, with a 2022 gathering of advanced air mobility (AAM) experts to be held on October 12 and 13 in Brooklyn, New York. In early 2020, ride-hailing giant Uber sold its Elevate flight booking platform to Joby, having staged the third Elevate Summit in Washington, D.C., in June of that year. Due mainly to Covid restrictions, the event was not held in 2020 and 2021.
According to Joby, which is working to certify its four-passenger eVTOL aircraft in time to start commercial operations in 2024, the summit will once again focus on how the “aerial ridesharing ecosystem” can be established with discussions between aircraft manufacturers, supply chain companies, investors, city officials, and real estate developers.
The company has indicated that it intends to enable customers to book air and ground transportation arrangements through a combination of its own app and the main Uber platform.
“We launched the Elevate Summit five years ago to provide an open forum for this new industry to come together and embrace a shared vision of the future,” said Joby’s head of product Eric Allison, who was formerly head of Elevate at Uber. “Since then, the Summit has been established as a keystone event for aerial mobility, laying the foundation for the industry to make the leap from renderings to reality.”
Alison pointed out that since the last Elevate Summit, several AAM start-ups, including Joby, have raised large amounts of capital through initial public offerings. Joby is one of a small group of eVTOL contenders actively flight testing production-conforming full-scale prototype aircraft.
The 2022 Elevate Summit will be staged in the Duggal Greenhouse at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York City. Joby says it will release further details about the event over the summer months. Previous gatherings have attracted more than 1,000 attendees, with speakers including senior FAA and NASA leaders, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, U.S. Senators, and CEOs of Fortune 100 companies.
