Executives at Joby Aviation know that some people are skeptical of the company's plan to manufacture the "vast majority" of components for its electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft in-house. With that in mind, the startup invited more than 100 industry analysts, government regulators and stakeholders, as well as a handful of journalists, to its pilot manufacturing facility in Marina, a small town on California's northern coast, on Oct. 14. "We sometimes get knocked around: 'Why are you spending so much money? Why do you have so many people? Why aren't you outsourcing things?'" says Paul Sciarra, executive chairman of Joby. "We hope that actually seeing some of the facilities today gives a sense of when you're doing something very new-we've seen this in other categories as well-it's really important to have a really tight coupling between the design work that gets done, and the manufacturing work that gets done, and the testing that gets done."
展开▼
