Joby Aviation is one of few “unicorns” in the electric Vertical Take Off and Landing (eVTOL) market, a billion-dollar enterprise. With funding coming from Toyota, several venture capital investors, Uber and the U. S. Army, Joby seems poised to demonstrate Urban Air Mobility (UAM) in a serious way. In 2011 JoeBen Bevirt, founder of Joby Energy, Joby Aviation, and creator of those knobby-looking tripods you see everywhere, invited Patrick McLaughlin to visit his design studio. Your editor got to tag along. On Woodpecker Ridge, north of Santa Cruz, JoeBen’s barn-like studio housed about a dozen engineers and designers all working on electricity-generating kites. He wore a T-shirt reading, “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much room.” That edginess has helped him, in the last decade to be a major player, with now over 500 employees in the aviation sector. JoeBen and Patrick discussed motor design and integration with a controller Patrick had built from off-the-shelf …
