Toyota’s efforts in transportation go far beyond building Camrys. . .

By Gary S. Vasilash

“Air mobility has the potential to change our ‘sense of distance and time,’ and open a future with the new option of air mobility that will further enrich the lives of many people.”

You can imagine someone who is in the business of making things like electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxis saying something like that.

But that was said by Hiroki Nakajima, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Toyota Motor Corporation.

That’s right: an exec at a company that is best known for building things that travel on the surface of the earth promoting getting from point A to B in the sky via eVTOLs.

Nakajima made the statement earlier this week when an electric aircraft built by Joby Aviation, a company founded in 2009 and based in California, made Joby’s first international exhibition flight at the Toyota Higashi-Fuji Technical Center in Shizuoka, Japan.

One could argue that Toyota is in the business of making things like electric air taxis because it has invested $894-million in Joby; it has Toyota personnel working along side those who work for Joby in a facility in California; and it has signed an agreement through which it will be supplying powertrain and actuation components to Joby for the build of the aircraft.

Although one of the business cases that is being made for these electric air taxis is transporting people from places like the Downtown Manhattan Heliport to LaGuardia or JFK, there are also opportunities for using the aircraft in rural areas. Think, for example, of emergency transport of people who are in places where the terrain means the roads have twists and turns, adding to additional transport time vs. flying in from point A to B and back.

Another example of why the future of transportation is multimodal.