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Jul 13, 2023 — Building a better world for our communities and future generations is a core part of our mission at Joby. We believe our quiet, all-electric aircraft will play a key role in reducing transportation emissions and improving mobility in congested cities, but we know that how we achieve this mission is just as important.
We’re building an aviation company that aims to be environmentally conscious, inclusive, and socially responsible, with safety at the heart of everything we do. Through our facilities, our people, and in every step of the manufacturing process, we continuously evaluate Joby’s impact on the planet and strive to do better.
We’re proud to publish our first Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Report for our fiscal year 2022. We see this annual report as the first step in an ongoing journey of fully evaluating our impact as we continue to identify opportunities for improvement.
Our report, accessible here, has four key sections: Safety, Climate and Environment, People and Community, and Corporate Governance, covering our activities up to and including 2022.
Commitment to Safety
Safety is at the core of our business and is incorporated in everything that we do at Joby. We have a comprehensive safety policy and an open and just safety culture that encourages learning from mistakes and continuous improvement. We understand that the safety of our team members, product, aircraft and passengers must be paramount in order for us to succeed.
In 2022, our biggest focus was ensuring safety of our team members through the Covid-19 pandemic with a robust testing program (140,000 PCR tests provided free of charge during the pandemic). We also implemented and drilled emergency response programs and developed enhanced safety training and programs for our team members, including customized OSHA training to enhance workplace safety.
Finally, we take a data-driven approach to team member safety, with every employee encouraged to openly report any unsafe condition or act via Joby’s fully-confidential, easily accessible voluntary safety reporting system.
Climate and Environment
At Joby, we’re leading the aviation industry’s transition to truly sustainable flight with the development of our all-electric aircraft. We know that our environmental footprint includes not just the aircraft we intend to operate as a passenger service, but also all of our development and manufacturing activities, as well as the source of power for current and future operations. Our primary California facilities have already transitioned to 100% renewable electricity, with equal parts solar and wind. We also launched recycling programs for both batteries and carbon fiber scrap.
In the development of our eVTOL aircraft, we prioritized minimizing its acoustic impact as a necessity in order to operate close to communities without disrupting daily life. During 2022, we partnered with NASA to confirm our aircraft’s acoustic profile using a field array of 50+ specialized microphones. The testing confirmed the revolutionary, low-noise footprint we set out to achieve, with our aircraft registering just 45.2 A-weighted decibels during overhead flight from an altitude of 1,640 feet (500 meters) – exponentially quieter than today’s helicopters.
An illustration of the acoustic footprint of the Joby aircraft compared to a Bell 206 at 720 feet above ground. Acoustic data for our aircraft is derived from NASA’s acoustic testing during representative test flights. Map Data: © MapTiler, © OpenStreetMap contributors
We also completed an initial life cycle assessment (LCA) of an eVTOL aircraft’s greenhouse gas emissions, including both manufacturing and operations. Conducted in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), we estimated the per-passenger-mile impact of our aircraft to be ~1.5x smaller than that of an electric passenger car, with both vehicles assumed to be using 100% renewable electricity, used for commuting purposes, and manufactured at scale.
Estimating life cycle impact early in our development is key to benchmarking the sustainability of our aircraft from the beginning, providing us with quantitative metrics and a more in-depth understanding that enables further improvements to its environmental footprint in the years ahead.
People and Community
As Joby has grown from a small team working in the mountains of Santa Cruz to a global company with more than 1,400 team members across five countries, we’ve seen first-hand the importance of fostering collaboration and community – both within our company and with external partners and localities.
We believe that a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace is critical to our success and the long-term sustainability of our business. Measuring our team’s demographics helps us track and trend our progress and supports development of programs to increase our diversity. For multiple years, we have partnered with the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship, the Brooke Owens Fellowship, and the Department of Defense’s SkillBridge Program, which promote high-achieving Black and female aerospace students and U.S. military service members, respectively. Our employee resource and social groups, such as Joby Pride and Women of Joby, reinforce our inclusive culture.
Joby employees and family members attending Silicon Valley Pride in 2022.
As the global aviation and aerospace industries face unprecedented labor shortages, we’re taking an innovative approach to talent and workforce development. We encourage career growth for our team members, and over 75% of current Joby leaders were promoted within. Externally for our entry level hiring, we are developing initiatives that provide greater access to meaningful careers and family-sustaining wages for groups and individuals that have historically not viewed careers in aerospace as an option.
To achieve this, we partner with local community-based organizations, nonprofits and educational institutions to develop and scale the programs and initiatives that cultivate the workforce of the future, including Monterey Bay Drone, Automation and Robotics Technology (DART), Mujeres en Acción (Women in Action), and New York City’s Aviation High School, a leading education center for aviation maintainers and aerospace professionals.
Governance Structure
Our board of directors firmly believes that we must be transparent with our stockholders with respect to our impact on the environment and the communities in which we operate. We intentionally established a board of directors with a diverse set of gender and ethnic backgrounds, skills, and experiences to enable more integrated decision-making, reduce blind spots, and reach a broader community.
The board of directors is involved in our ESG strategy and oversight through the Audit, Compensation, and Nominating/Governance Committees.
At Joby, we know that continuous improvement is the key to achieving greatness – not just in our technology, but also in our environmental impact, our company culture, and our communities. This first annual ESG report marks a starting point from which we strive to continue learning, implementing, and reflecting on our progress towards greater positive impact across everything we do.