Production of components for Joby Aviation electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles (eVTOL) will begin in Dayton this year, Greg Bowles, Joby’s head of government relations and regulatory affairs, told the Dayton Daily News last August.
On Tuesday, a new paint job on the company’s planned manufacturing site off Concorde Drive, a former U.S. Postal Service facility near Dayton International Airport, could be seen.
“No additional updates to share, but we’ll keep you in the loop as things progress,” a Joby spokeswoman said Tuesday night.
No one could be seen inside the locked building Tuesday during business hours, although a car and a crane were parked in the lot.
Bowles’ remarks came about 11 months after Joby’s first historic announcement that it would bring scaled production of its electric flying rotor-craft to the community, and about six months after Joby said it had selected a former U.S. Postal Service facility near Dayton International Airport for the work.
Meanwhile, the company has celebrated the doubling of its manufacturing footprint in Marina, Calif. The business has built five aircraft on its pilot manufacturing line in Marina.
In an earnings call last month, Joby Chief Executive and company founder JoeBen Bevirt said Joby was making progress at both its Marina manufacturing site and its planned Ohio site.
“The facility in Ohio is also coming along really, really well,” Bevirt told industry analysts in May. “This is a facility we purchased. And the team has done retrofits on it and we’re now installing the tooling and equipment, and we’re really excited to see parts starting to come out of that facility in the months to come.”
Shares of Joby have risen in recent days on President Donald Trump’s executive order last week aimed at “Unleashing American Drone Dominance.”
“The United States must accelerate the safe commercialization of drone technologies and fully integrate UAS (unmanned aerial systems) into the National Airspace System,” the executive order said. “The time has come to accelerate testing and to enable routine drone operations, scale up domestic production, and expand the export of trusted, American-manufactured drone technologies to global markets.”
Shares of Joby (NYSE: JOBY) ended trading Tuesday afternoon around $9.44 a share, up 21 cents or 2.3%. The stock’s 52-week range is $4.66 to $10.72.
Shares of Archer Aviation (NYSE: ACHR), a Joby competitor, were also up Tuesday, closing up 12 cents at $11.38.
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