Eric Allison has been on the front lines of the boom and bust cycles of electric flying cars.
The engineer started in 2010 at a skunkworks called Zee.Aero, which represented Google cofounder Larry Page’s earliest dive into eVTOLs or electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. Allison became the CEO of the secretive startup in 2015, a few years before it folded into Kitty Hawk, another Page venture led by self-driving car pioneer Sebastian Thrun.
What remains of Kitty Hawk and Zee.Aero largely lives on through Wisk Aero, which was previously a joint venture between Kitty Hawk and Boeing. Wisk is now working on autonomous flying taxis as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Boeing.
By 2018, Allison was leading Uber’s Elevate division, trying to bring to life the nascent flying car industry inside a company whose core business was ride-hailing services.
Uber sold its Elevate arm to Joby Aviation in 2020, along with a $75 million investment into the flying car company.
Now, as Joby’s chief product officer, Allison merges his two experiences from an engineering-heavy startup with Zee.Aero, and his platform- and product-centered role at Uber. His goal: Making an Uber-like service using flying cars.
“For me, it was kind of a nice way of putting two big pieces together,” Allison said.
Earlier this month, the company conducted one of its first US public demonstrations of the Joby aircraft for 50,000 attendees of the California International Airshow in Monterey County.
Allison spoke to Business Insider via video call and email about his early bet on eVTOLs and why he believes flying cars are no longer speculative.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You’ve been working on eVTOLS since 2010 with Zee.Aero, right?
I helped to get Zee going in 2010. The team was made up of really sharp engineers who cared about one thing above all else: making something that worked.
I ran engineering for a while and eventually took over running the company. In the early days, Zee and Joby were operating somewhat in parallel. Joby was a scrappy team, and Zee had lots of funding. We were really focused on the engineering — we didn’t do anything public. It was all private, and I think I only gave one external-facing event the entire time I was there.
Everything that Wisk Aero is today is effectively the inheritor of Zee. There’s a through-line from that work to what they’re doing now.
What even drew you to the idea of flying taxis back in 2010? That wasn’t even a buzzword then.
It was more about applying emerging technology trends to flying vehicles. The term people used was “personal air vehicle.” That’s how we initially thought about it. It wasn’t until around 2013 or 2014 that the concept of a four-passenger air taxi really became this dominant model for the industry.
When we started working on this, there was no Uber; iPhones had just come out. But the technology curve was moving fast. Batteries, inverters, and computing power were all improving. In 2010, electric vehicles were just starting to emerge. Tesla’s first Roadster had only been released a few years prior. Those same components — batteries, inverters, and silicon carbide switches — made electric propulsion possible for aircraft.
In some sense, a lot of us were inspired by toys. Model airplanes were transforming thanks to better batteries and motor controllers. It was the same principle, just scaled up. The question was: “Can these technologies be applied to larger aircraft safely?” Joby figured this out early on, and it’s what we’ve been working on for years.
Was there something you believed early on that you no longer believe today?
From day one, we believed electric propulsion could make aircraft quieter, more reliable, and cheaper to operate. We’re doing that now. What’s evolved is the business model, whether this would be a personal aircraft or an air taxi service.
Have you had a moment where you realized this was no longer speculative — that it’s real?
Totally. I had that moment several weeks ago at an event where we were showing some of our technology. We’re no longer convincing people that this is possible.
Going from Zee to Uber is a big shift. What was it like trying to bring this transformative mode of transport to Uber, a massive ride-hailing company?
It was a big shift, but it made a lot of sense. At Uber, the team was small but had a clear and ambitious product vision.
Uber’s focus was not on the hardware, vehicle engineering side of things. We weren’t developing a vehicle. We had some concept vehicles that we developed, but the whole idea was to get others to develop the vehicles. And we provided the overarching business case and the product vision, in a way, of how this could all be woven together into a service that consumers would want to use.
What were the challenges and the hardest part of running Elevate inside Uber?
The hardest part was holding a clear, ambitious vision for a technology most people thought was still science fiction. The tech was real, but the world wasn’t quite ready to believe it. We had to cast a vision that felt tangible and make people see how it could actually fit into their daily lives. That was both the most challenging and the most exciting part.
Like anything, there were pros and cons. But overall, the Elevate experience was really good. Uber had a lot of credibility in transportation, and that helped us build the vision and bring people together. The Elevate Summits we ran were pivotal — they catalyzed the industry. I think they helped spur the overall amount of investment and excitement that pushed eVTOL technology forward.
Can you paint me a vivid picture of what a Joby trip will look like for a customer?
Think of someone in lower Manhattan or the West Side of Manhattan who’s traveling for business.
Maybe he’s running late, maybe he just wants to have a seamless, stress-free experience going to the airport on a Delta flight.
They open the Uber app and, instead of selecting UberX or Uber Black, they choose the Joby option directly within the Uber app. A car takes them to the West 30th Street heliport. The system sequences arrivals so that a few passengers arrive together. They all flow through a lounge, where we also operate the Blade service Joby recently acquired, and board the aircraft. In seven minutes, after an amazing view and stress-free experience, you land right near the terminal at JFK and walk right in to go through security and get on your flight.
It’s seamless and stress-free. You can experience a version of this through Blade in New York, but helicopters are more expensive to operate.
Some people are still skeptical. We’ve seen cycles of hype and disappointment. Why is this moment different?
We’ve been doing the hard work for a long time. And flying is a way of proving that it’s here, it’s happening, and that it’s working.
The recent airshow is a good example. Showing people makes this a lot more real, and there’s a shift from something that’s a little science fiction to something that’s tangible.
Now it’s a matter of when it will be available to start flying in it.
You’ve been at this for 15 years now. What would make you feel that you’ve finished your job or accomplished your mission?
I’ll be excited about the first passenger, but I’ll be really excited for our 100,000th passenger. And honestly, even then, I probably won’t stop. There’s always another boundary to push and another horizon to chase. That’s the fun of it.
Read the full article here
