Air Taxi Manufacturing: eVTOL Lines and Where ABB Fits

Electric air taxis such as Joby's S4, Archer's Midnight and EHang's EH216-S have spent years in test flights and certification. The harder part may be air taxi manufacturing: building hundreds of aircraft a year to the same approved design. This post looks at the flying cars and prototypes that came first, the factories Joby, Archer and EHang are filling now, the automation already laying carbon fiber and welding battery packs, and where ABB robots could fit. Small drones are a different business, covered in our post on drone manufacturing.

A Joby Aviation S4 eVTOL aircraft parked after a ground test at Edwards Air Force Base, California, September 2023. Photo: Harlan Huntington, US Air Force via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

How flying cars and air taxi prototypes were built

The flying car is older than the air taxi, and the first ones were built one at a time. Moulton Taylor designed and built the Aerocar in Longview, Washington, in 1949. Its folding wings let one person turn the road vehicle into an aircraft in five minutes, and on the road the wings and tail were towed behind. It could drive at up to 60 miles per hour and fly at 110. The Civil Aeronautics Administration certified it in 1956, and Ling-Temco-Vought agreed to build it in series if Taylor could collect 500 orders. He got only half that number, so production plans ended and only six Aerocars were made.

A Taylor Aerocar, the roadable aircraft first built in Longview, Washington, in 1949, on display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Photo: Jim Heaphy (Cullen328) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The new generation also started small. Joby Aviation was founded on 11 September 2009 as one of several projects on JoeBen Bevirt's ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and it took part in NASA's X-57 Maxwell and LEAPTech electric aircraft projects before developing its own design. It flew subscale prototypes by 2015, full-scale unmanned prototypes in 2017 and a production prototype in 2019, and in January 2020 it announced plans for a 55,000 square foot production facility in Marina, California. Archer was founded on 16 October 2018 and unveiled its Maker demonstrator in June 2021. In China, EHang's two-seat 216 had made more than 1,000 manned flights by July 2018.

NASA's X-57 Mod II electric aircraft during its first integrated motor and propeller spin test in 2019. Joby took part in NASA's X-57 work. Photo: NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center / Steve Parcel via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Certification covers the factory as well as the aircraft. On 7 April 2024 China's aviation authority gave EHang a production certificate for the EH216-S, which EHang called the first in the eVTOL industry. It confirms a quality system that covers raw materials, suppliers, production control and pre-delivery tests. Joby rolled out its first production aircraft on 28 June 2023 and began flight testing its first FAA-conforming S4 in March 2026. In 2024 Seneviratne of Wichita State's ATLAS lab told Aerospace America that the companies were so focused on certification that they could not yet spend much on working out mass production.

An EHang 216 two-seat autonomous aircraft in Spanish National Police colors on display in Avila, 2022. Photo: David Perez / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Air taxi factories and the robots inside them

Joby began making propeller blades at Dayton International Airport in late 2025, with capacity for up to 15,000 a year, and in January 2026 it bought a second Dayton-area building of more than 700,000 square feet to double aircraft production in 2027, Area Development reported on 30 September 2026. On 30 June 2026 Joby and Toyota set up a manufacturing joint venture that draws on Toyota's experience with production systems. Archer finished its 400,000 square foot plant in Covington, Georgia, in December 2024, with Stellantis as its contract manufacturer for mass production. EHang opened a production site in Yunfu in 2021.

A mock-up of the Joby Aviation S4 at the Japan Mobility Show 2023. Toyota became Joby's manufacturing partner. Photo: SuFlyer / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Automation already does some of the work. Archer built its battery pack line in San Jose "automotive style", with automation for cell testing and loading, adhesive dispensing, laser cleaning, laser welding and end-of-line tests. The line is meant to supply the Georgia plant and to reach up to 15,000 packs a year in its final phase. At Wichita State's ATLAS lab, a former Boeing building holds $80 million worth of manufacturing robots and machines. A robotic arm there laid carbon fiber for an 11-meter wing section of Textron eAviation's Nexus prototype, and the institute installed a laser parts inspection system at Joby's plant in Marina.

ISAAC, a composite manufacturing robot, in a clean room at NASA's Langley Research Center, 2021. Photo: Harlen Capen, NASA Langley via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

We found no ABB robot on an air taxi line. ABB robots do similar jobs in other plants, though. For a battery maker, system integrator JOT Automation built a pack assembly and test line around an ABB IRB 4600 that handles electrical testing, assembly, laser marking and laser welding, and it raised throughput by 600 percent. ABB says the IRB 4600 has cycle times 25 percent faster than the industry benchmark. Its GoFa cobot with the Ultra Accuracy option has over 10 times the path accuracy of other cobots, according to ABB, which lists composite material layers in aerospace manufacturing among its uses.

An ABB IRB 4600 robot in the battery pack assembly and test line that JOT Automation built for an energy storage maker. Photo: ABB

Where air taxi manufacturing is heading

Most people will meet air taxis as passengers. In March 2025 EHang's first operators received air operator certificates that let the public buy tickets for sightseeing flights in Guangzhou and Hefei, and in August 2025 Joby agreed to buy Blade's passenger business for $125 million. How fast those rides spread depends on the factories. Toyota's part at Joby is to improve productivity, quality and cost and to help expand production capacity as demand grows, while Stellantis is Archer's contract manufacturer.

A Volocopter 2X, a two-seat electric multicopter, on show at the IAA motor show in Frankfurt in 2017. Photo: Spielvogel / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Several of these steps could suit ABB robots, though for now that is our assessment and not an announced project. ABB robots already assemble battery packs and laser-weld them, as the JOT line shows. Composite parts need precise layup and inspection. In September 2026 ABB described a GoFa at Andover, a maker of optical filters for aerospace and defense, chamfering filter edges with path accuracy down to 0.03 mm while working beside people without a cage. Lines like these are usually laid out and tested in RobotStudio before any robot is bolted down.

An ABB GoFa cobot at Andover's station for chamfering the edges of optical filters. Photo: ABB

Volume, safety and skills are the open problems. The Aerocar showed what happens when orders do not reach the number a factory needs. Batteries are a hazard in production as well as in flight: in October 2026 Aviation International News reported that a test pack overheated at Archer's San Jose lab, three people were hurt and about 100 were evacuated. Skills are short too. Joby's Dayton project was announced with up to 2,000 jobs, and ATLAS, which already employs 130 people, wants to create a pipeline of engineers trained in advanced manufacturing.

Two men at Andover look at the FlexPendant of the GoFa chamfering cell. Photo: ABB

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