The air-taxi race has three leaders.
Here is each of them.

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Santa Cruz, California, Joby Aviation has spent more than a decade and over a billion dollars on a single aircraft: the Joby S4, a five-seat (four passengers plus pilot) battery-electric air taxi with six tilting propellers and a ~100-mile range on a charge.

Joby is generally assessed as the commercial-readiness leader in the West. Its aircraft is in Stage 5 — the final stage — of the FAA type-certification process, with FAA-conforming production aircraft flying from its Marina, California pilot-production line since March 2026. In the UAE, Joby has a six-year exclusive air-taxi agreement with Dubai's transport authority, and is targeting passenger service in Dubai as its first market. Toyota is both an investor and its manufacturing partner, and Delta, Uber, and Blade back the launch network.

PROGRAM STATUS PER COMPANY DISCLOSURES AND INDUSTRY REPORTING, OCTOBER 2026.

Six rotors, one wing, a hundred miles.

The S4 is a lift-plus-cruise design with a high wing and six propellers: four large tilting props on the wingtips and two smaller lift props on the wing centerline. Tilt the front props forward and it cruises like a conventional aircraft on a wing; point them up and it lifts off vertically, no runway required. The cabin carries four passengers with a pilot, and the battery-electric powertrain is engineered to be quiet enough to land in neighborhoods — one of Joby's most-cited acoustic demonstrations to city regulators.

Honda has been designing aircraft for decades — the HondaJet and its HF120 engine are FAA-certified and flying worldwide — and in 2021 it formally turned that heritage toward the air-taxi market. Its answer is different from every other entrant on this page: a gas-turbine hybrid, built not for the intra-city hop but for the 250-mile regional trip.

The full-scale technology demonstrator, registered N805HX, completed its first flight on April 1, 2026, at Honda Research Institute USA in San Luis Obispo, California. The program is now in technology validation, with FAA certification-basis work underway and a target of entry into service in the early 2030s. The powertrain pairs a compact gas-turbine generator — derived from the HondaJet's HF120 engine lineage and generator technology honed in Formula 1 — with electric motors driving the props. The campus vertiport at 1201 W. 5th Street is positioned as the aircraft's promotional home in Los Angeles.

SPECS PER HONDA PUBLISHED R&D MATERIALS, OCTOBER 2026. AIRCRAFT IN TECHNOLOGY VALIDATION.

Lift, cruise, and a turbine for the far side of the city limits.

The Honda Hybrid eVTOL is a lift-and-cruise layout: eight lifting propellers on twin booms between a forward canard and a longer rear wing, and two pusher props for cruise. The gas-turbine generator feeds batteries that drive the props, extending the target range to 400 km / 250 miles with IFR reserves. The cabin is designed for four or more passengers with one pilot, with HondaJet-informed spaciousness and automotive-grade noise insulation.