Q4 2023 Joby Aviation Inc Earnings Call

Participants

Teresa Thuruthiyil; Head of Investor Relations; Joby Aviation Inc

JoeBen Bevirt; Chief Executive Office, Founder, Director, Chief Architect; Joby Aviation Inc

Didier Papadopoulos; Head - Program Management & Systems Engineering; Joby Aviation Inc

Matthew Field; Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer; Joby Aviation Inc

Andres Sheppard; Analyst; Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.

Kristine Liwag; Analyst; Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC

Savi Syth; Analyst; Raymond James & Associates, Inc.

Austin Moeller; Analyst; Canaccord Genuity Corp.

Bill Peterson; Analyst; JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Edison Yu; Analyst; Deutsche Bank AG

Presentation

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to Joby Aviation's fourth quarter 2023 conference call and webcast. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Teresa Thuruthiyil.

Teresa Thuruthiyil

Thank you. Hi, everyone, and welcome to Joby Aviation's fourth quarter fiscal year 2023 financial results conference call. My name is Teresa Thuruthiyil, and I'm Joby's Head of Investor Relations. On the call today, we have JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and Chief Executive Officer; Paul Sciarra, Executive Chairman; Didier Papadopoulos, President of Aircraft OEM; and Matt Field, Chief Financial Officer.
After management's prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. Please note that our discussion today will include statements regarding future events and financial performance as well as statements of belief or expectation and intend these forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations. It involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied for a more detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our filings with the SEC and the Safe Harbor disclaimer contained in today's shareholder letter.
The forward looking statements included in this call are made only as of the date of this call, and the company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them. Also during the call, we will refer to GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures is included in our Q4 2023 shareholder letter, which you can find on our Investor Relations website, along with the replay of this call. And with all of that said, I'll now turn the call over to JoeBen.

JoeBen Bevirt

Thank you, Teresa. And thank you, everyone, for joining us today for our fourth quarter call. We entered 2023 knowing it would be a pivotal and exciting year for us, and it did not disappoint over the first three quarters. We launched production and delivered the first EV toll aircraft to the US Air Force ahead of schedule. We started testing with a pilot onboard and have now completed more than 100 inhabitants like we expanded our partnership with SK Telecom.
We deepened our partnership with Toyota, and we announced a range of new partnerships for infrastructure development. We strengthened our already strong balance sheet we expanded our contract with the DoD. We selected the site for manufacturing in Ohio and released our first ESG report. Perhaps most importantly, we made critical progress on certification, effectively completing the second stage in February of last year.
And as we announced this morning, we have now become the first EV toll company to complete the third stage we delivered on all the goals we set ourselves for 2023 and ended the year continuing to lead our industry on the path to commercialization. These accomplishments are tangible proof of what makes GLV special, and they kept us moving steadily towards our goal of launching commercial passenger operations in 2025.
During the fourth quarter, the team maintained incredible momentum as we crossed into this calendar year. A real highlight for me was welcoming a team of senior leaders from the FAA to Marina in January. This visit gave us an opportunity to demonstrate firsthand the maturity of our designs and our production processes as we discussed our certification program with them in detail.
This level of positive engagement and collaboration is encouraging and will help to ensure continued US leadership in this new sector. In November, we were honored to demonstrate this leadership by completing the first EV top flight in New York City. This was a seminal moment for our company, seeing Adobe aircraft lift off from a Manhattan teleport and complete a flight against the backdrop of the New York City skyline. It was quite literally a dream come true for me and it moved the needle in front of the local community, Mayor Adams and key stakeholders.
We were able to demonstrate the incredibly quiet acoustic footprint of our aircraft and the opportunity presented by our technology to improve city mobility, seeing really is believing. And I'm so proud of the team that was able to make this happen. It's just another example of the tangible real-life progress were able to demonstrate at Joby day in and day out.
Our flight was followed by a commitment from the city to electrify the site and bring air taxis to one of the most iconic teleports in the world a few weeks before that flight, we were pleased to welcome Delta's CEO, Ed Bastian, and representatives from the Economic Development Corporation of New York and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to our community event in Brooklyn, where we highlighted our shared ambition to deliver air taxi service in New York.
We continue to work closely together to realize opportunities at Delta's hubs at JFK, LaGuardia, and LAX. And over the last few weeks, we've announced key partnerships. The New York City region to support the installation of charging infrastructure. We've also announced partnerships with play AC to support the development of our LTE network with Nomura to support our Tokyo network and most recently with Sky Sports to build infrastructure in Dubai.
Working with these partners, we plan to install our global electric aviation charging system or geeks. The first charging system designed specifically for aviation, which supports the safe and efficient operation of all electric aircraft under development.
Today, in November, we released the specification of geeks to the industry to accelerate the commercialization of emissions free aviation technology, but the most significant commercial development of the quarter came in December when we signed an agreement with the government of Dubai to launch an air taxi service in the Emirates announced last week at the opening of the world government Summit.
This is a landmark agreement that delivers on all three ingredients required for the successful launch of an air taxi service in any markets, a definitive path to operations, well-placed infrastructure supported by dedicated partners and an aircraft with the capacity and range to deliver meaningful customer journeys The agreement grants Joby exclusive rights to operate air taxis in the Emirate or six years and includes financial support for additional operations.
The government of Dubai wants the service to be the first in the world. And their actions certainly reflect that ambition with support from the very highest levels of government and a regulatory pathway that builds on FA processes, but allows for operations ahead of achieving type certification in the US. This is a remarkable opportunity for any EV toll operator, and we're proud to have demonstrated to the government of Dubai that JV is the best positioned to deliver this service.
It's a definitive tangible partnership that provides another path to delivering on our goal of starting commercial passenger service in 2025. That commitment to delivering real progress and results is exactly what we will continue to do this year. In fact, we've already started, last month we received our Part 145 repair station certificate from the FAA. This approval lays the foundation for us to carry out maintenance, repair and overhaul services for our future fleet, which is a core part of our vertically integrated approach to commercial operations.
And just this morning, we announced that we have become the first EV toll company to complete Stage 3 of the FAA certification process, an incredible milestone that video I will speak more about in a moment. With the first three stages behind us this year, we expect to make steady progress on Stage 4 as we and are for credit testing across more and more of the aircraft.
In addition to continuing our leadership position on certification, we expect to achieve a number of milestones this year. We expect to reach a production run rate equivalent to one aircraft a month by the end of the year. As we continue to ramp production in support of certification and commercialization, we plan to break ground on our expansion in Marina and begin component manufacturing in Dayton, we will commit at least two more aircraft in an apartment of defense as part of our existing contracts.
And finally, building on the excitement we brought to New York City in November, we plan to extend our flight exhibition series to additional key markets. We believe these are the right milestones to ensure Joby's continued leadership in the sector. While we are blind to the challenges ahead of us, we believe that we are best positioned to succeed, with the strongest balance sheet, the best team in the industry and most important, a laser focus on delivery. Thank you for your continued support and over to Didier to discuss our progress in more detail.

Didier Papadopoulos

Thanks, JoeBen. I'd like to add my own appreciation for the job, the team and everything they've achieved over the last 12 months. It's been a remarkable period in one that's been central to keeping us on track to launch commercial service in 2025.+ 2023 was an incredible year for Joby. And this year, we are already off to a strong start with the news we shared this morning that we are now the first EBITDA company to complete the third stage of the FAA certification process.
This is the result of years of hard work. And in 2023 alone, we had nearly 3,000 pages of documents accepted by the FDA. This is truly an incredible milestone, and I want to take a moment to underscore what it means across every part of our aircraft program, we can confidently proceed into submitting test plans and conducting for COVID tests in Stage 4.
That includes the path we'll take to certify all of the structural mechanical and electrical systems of our aircraft and the program wide approach to software, cybersecurity, noise and human factors from the carbon fiber composites to the metallic, the flight electronics to the control systems, the batteries to the electric propulsion systems and much more.
We now have a well-defined path to certification have been part of many aviation certification programs, and this is truly an incredible milestone for us. We continue to lead the industry towards certification because of so much hard work by the jobs team, our partners and by the dedicated FADV staff who have worked closely with us for many years to reach this point.
Now our focus is fully on stage for where we continue to ramp up our FA for COVID testing efforts. Last quarter, we completed 34 credit Pathfinder tests. 24 of these tests covered for electronic components. Each from a different functional area on the job. The aircraft, the other six were related to our materials and processes, the building blocks of our aircraft structure.
Through these Pathfinder tests. We're validating our approach to testing across each area of the aircraft, ensuring our testing methods are accurate and efficient before rolling them out more widely. Those 30 tests completed in Q4 for us in a great position to complete hundreds of our credit tests across our structural materials and flight electronics over the course of this year.
We're also beginning to move up the pyramid to larger structures and systems with the acceptance this past quarter of our test plan for the tail static load test, we're now building our first FAA conforming to structure to begin FA. for credit testing. We will continue to see this progress stack up each quarter as we put more and more points on the board with the FDA.
What you won't see reflected in our progress. Chart is all of the work the team is doing working directly with the FDA to progressively prepare us for success at the top levels of the aircraft permit testing at the integrated system level.
And at the aircraft level last year, a lot of our interactions with the FDA was getting their hands on documentation such as third plans and system reviews this year is progressively more about FAA hands on the actual aircraft systems with all of our aircraft certification plans, except that we're able to map out dozens of upcoming visits with a focus on dry running our system level and aircraft level tests.
This is the heart of the certification process. It's about Joby and the FAA, working together at our simulators in our integrated test lab and at our many other test facilities to practice and perfect our testing approach in advance of our credit testing so that when we're ready to do it for credits, we already know we're going to get perfect marks.
Our government partnerships also play a key role in these early tests. This week, our team at Edwards Air Force Base is working with the Air Force and the Navy to conduct high intensity irradiated field or her testing on the entire aircraft.
Hervé testing is a key part of any aircraft certification program. It verifies the onboard electronics equipments can withstand the levels of electromagnetic interference they are expected to encounter while in operation we run Hervé test routinely at our facility in San Carlos at the component level, but we will also be required to carry out her testing on the full aircraft as part of certification and that's exactly what we are validating right now at Edwards.
This test is an example of the incredible access to facilities and expertise that we gained through our partnership with the government similar to the acoustics testing we conducted with NASA in 2021 and the wind tunnel testing we completed last year at the National full-scale aerodynamics complex is also a great illustration of how our work with the DoD can accelerate the certification process, helping us to prepare to do this test for FAA credit down the line. And this is exactly the type of testing that will support the landmark deal.
We announced last week with the government of Dubai to launch the world's first air taxi network in a premier global city the regulatory framework we have agreed to with the Dubai general Civil Aviation Authority builds upon FAA standards using much of the same test data that we're submitting to the FDA for review, but with a more expedient path to market, we'll accomplish this by using testing and analysis that we were already planning on completing as part of the FAA certification process alongside a high level of regulator oversight and an ongoing review process to ensure safety for early operations.
In other words, it builds on existing work to get us to market sooner and allows us to learn along the way. It's a win-win situation that doesn't add significant additional certification burden to our team as well as progress on certification. We've been hard at work preparing for future operations from our exhibition flights in New York City to completing a series of precision landing test with the FDA. This test campaign was a sight to behold, the team flew 31 times in just two days with three different pilots onboard to demonstrate the precise handling qualities of our aircraft.
This showcase of our aircraft performance was critical in demonstrating to the FDA that we have the same infrastructure requirements as similarly sized helicopters. This confirms what we already knew that we will be able to use existing infrastructure such as the downtown Manhattan teleport and our partner HHI.'s teleport just across the Hudson River in currently New Jersey.
Additionally, the data we shared with the FDA through this testing will help inform the design guidance. They are finalizing for future vertical ports. One of the many areas where Joby is not just leading, but defining the industry, another area where we're defining the industry is understanding how to integrate an air taxi service into the airspace for our major cities and airports. Just before the end of the year, we announced the completion of a series of aerospace simulations with NASA focusing on the complex airspace near Dallas Fort Worth with real pilots and air traffic controllers playing their role.
The jobs NASA team simulated scenarios with dozens of jobs aircraft I laughed at the same time alongside existing airport traffic during the simulation, air traffic controllers were able to integrate up to 120 EBIT-R operations for our arrivals and departures from DFW Airport Central terminal area. The seminal exercise demonstrated that we're able to operate air taxi services in some of the busiest airspace using the tools available to air traffic controllers today.
This is a remarkable proof point as we prepare for operations and markets around the world, and this future begins on our manufacturing lines. I personally get so much energy from spending time in Marina and San Carlos, where you can really see production ramping up every week. Last year, we built hundreds of light electronics units and thousands of composite parts. We now have one aircraft in final assembly and two more aircraft being assembled right behind it.
The team is cranking out parts for numerous aircraft to follow and to support company and for COVID testing, by the end of the year, we will be building at a run rate equivalent to an aircraft a month. And as we expand in Marina and bring online facilities in Dayton, Ohio. Our production rate will continue to accelerate to support commercial service. We now have four FAA conforming assembly lines and plan to open four more over the course of 2024, laying the groundwork for expansion of our for credit testing and receiving our production certificate soon after our tax certification.
Finally, I want to take a moment to emphasize the importance of the geeks charging interface our team has developed. This technology has been more than a decade in the making the job the team has built and flown multiple generations of EBIT-R aircraft logging over 30,000 miles that include vertical takeoff and landings.
We've learned just how important it is to have the right charging and thermal conditioning systems in place to support rapid operations and maximize battery life. We took on the hard challenge of designing and building the first ever charging system that actively caused the vehicles batteries resulting in a dramatically more performance aircraft and higher Temple operations than achievable with an off-the-shelf EV charger.
In November, we shared the specifications of the gates with the industry to move all of us closer to a world where acquired clean aircraft are commonplace, and we're actively working with a number of electric aircraft developers to ensure the charges we plan to install with our partners around the globe will work for everyone.
We have a lot of hard work ahead of us on certification, on manufacturing and on preparing for commercial operation, but we have the best team and the right strategic approach, and we will continue to deliver as we always have. On that note, I'll hand it off to Matt to discuss our financial results.

Matthew Field

Thanks, Didier, and good afternoon, everyone. We ended 2023 with cash and short-term investments totaling slightly over $1 billion. With the strongest balance sheet in the industry, we are able to support our leading position in certification and manufacturing, while at the same time, capitalizing on the opportunities that JoeBen and Didier highlighted, expanding our capacity, broadening our base of operations with the Department of Defense and investing in the early stages of commercialization.
Looking back at the fourth quarter of 2023, we incurred a net loss of $115 million, reflecting a loss from operations of about $128 million, offset by interest and other income of $13 million. Our net loss compares to a net income in the third quarter, with the difference explained by the non-recurrence of the favorable revaluation of our warrants and earn-out shares. Our operating expenses were largely flat over the quarter, reflecting higher spending on staffing and certification activities, offset by a lower accrual for stock-based compensation compared with the prior quarter.
In the fourth quarter, we recognized our first revenue as a company totaling $1 million. This revenue represents consideration received for providing early government direct and flight operations conducted in Marina, California with our prototype aircraft. The associated costs are called out in our operating expenses under flight services, which represent the direct costs associated with supporting these flights.
We've defined this revenue and cost as providing flight services to differentiate it from our long term air taxi service model, which we expect will look very different. For example, since we are utilizing a prototype aircraft for these operations, we are not including the aircraft cost in our figures, nor do we have other expected costs like landing fees that would eventually be part of a more traditional revenue and cost of goods sold approach.
Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP metric that we reconciled to our net income in our shareholder letter was a loss of $96 million in the fourth quarter. This was about $3 million higher than the prior quarter, reflecting increased staffing and cost to support certification, as mentioned earlier. Our adjusted EBITDA loss was just under $19 million higher than in the same period last year, reflecting the growth in our organization and expenses to support manufacturing and certification.
Our global staffing with more than 1,700 employees continues to grow at a measured pace as we bring on resources in a deliberate and pragmatic way to support our initiatives at just the right time, with most of our staff supporting our company certification and manufacturing efforts.
In the fourth quarter of 2023, our cash used in operations and spending on property, plant, and equipment totaled $91 million. For the full year, this totaled $344 million, which was below our anticipated spending range, reflecting timing of payments and disciplined choices around our spending in the fourth quarter.
As mentioned at the outset, we ended the year with $1 billion in cash and short-term marketable securities. As we look to the year ahead, we are excited by the significant opportunities that JoeBen and Didier highlighted, as we continue to garner support for bringing quiet, emissions-free flight to market and to execute on certification and manufacturing milestones.
Turning to our outlook for 2024. First on the top line. While we are not providing detailed revenue guidance for next year, it is important to understand the breadth of our flight programs. In 2024, our revenue this year will be driven by on-base government directed flights that are part of the contract that we signed with the Department of Defense in April of last year. We will also fly aircraft on base and then Marina, as part of our internal certification and testing programs, we do expect to receive payments from the US government for some portion of these slides.
As we have in the past, which we account for as contra R&D expense, along with other R&D-related deliverables with one Joby aircraft currently at Edwards and a second expected to be delivered this year. Our government directed flights will show up as revenue similarly to what we recorded in Q4. However, the agreed payments for our earliest directed flight operations, which we completed last year were higher than what we will record for on base operations, which reflects the progressive maturity of the aircraft and our operations.
Consequently, our fourth quarter 2023 revenue should not be presumed to be annualized into this year. Additionally, our on these flight hours are expected to be lumpy as we find the right cadence with the Department of Defense with our first on base operations. For example, our aircraft at Edwards has been undergoing testing in the first quarter as JoeBen described earlier.
So we do not expect meaningful revenue in this quarter. In total for the year, the overall impact to our cash from our first on base operations is expected to be negligible, which is consistent with our plan as we have explained in the past, the more timely benefits we expect to gain from this early engagement include operational learnings, which will pay dividends into the future as we build both our government and commercial service businesses and the opportunity to showcase our aircraft features and capabilities, broad array of potential future government customers.
From a spending perspective, we expect growth in our certification, manufacturing and go-to-market activities to result in the use of cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments of approximately $440 million to $470 million. This increase compared with 2023 includes continued staffing growth and the production of additional aircraft and parts, as Didier discussed earlier.
We also plan to expand our manufacturing facility in Marina California breaking ground on a building that more than doubles our footprint in Marina to support flight training, aircraft storage and expanded manufacturing processes. This is expected to provide sufficient space to more than double our annual production capacity at this site, giving us the option to scale up to 25 planes per year to support early market operations, while we bring up our Ohio facility.
I'd like to thank the state of California who approved a $9.8 million Cal Competes grant in November, and thank our local community partners who supported our application. This grant will offset a substantial portion of the building costs. As we discussed last quarter, we are planning to add manufacturing capacity in Dayton, Ohio, the birthplace of aviation.
We have agreed to the location for our initial manufacturing operations and our days away from closing on the facility purchase after interior improvement and the installation of machining equipment. This facility will start building parts to support production and aircraft assembly in California.
We are grateful to our state and local partners in Dayton, Ohio for their support, with incentives totaling up to $325 million. A portion of these incentives will offset much of our planned investments at this first site starting this year. With these investments, you can expect our capital expenditure to increase significantly larger than the $31 million we spent in 2023 as we build out our facilities to support aircraft production.
This strategy of supporting initial production and certification from our San Carlos and Marina facilities and a stepwise systematic scaling in Dayton reflects our rational measured approach to manufacturing and spending. It gives us optimal flexibility to incorporate learnings from the production floor. While we proceed through the certification process, it also demonstrates the maturity of the organization to prevent overcommitting investments and resources. While we certify build and commercialize this new form of transportation.
In summary, 2023 was a year of notable achievements from progressing certification. The rollout of our first production aircraft, first flight to the pilot onboard first urban exhibition flight in New York City, the delivery of our first aircraft to a customer and our first revenue and 2024 is off to a fast start as you've heard both on the certification front with the completion of Stage 3 of our certification process and the signing of a definitive agreement to launch exclusive air taxi services in Dubai we are excited by the year ahead and the opportunities we see as we continue to lead our industry towards commercialization of this revolutionary technology.
This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, would you, please instruct participants on how to ask questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Andres Sheppard, Cantor Fitzgerald.

Andres Sheppard

Hey, everyone, good afternoon and congratulations on another quarter in all of the developments. I guess first question was I was hoping if you can expand a little bit further on the announcement to launch the air taxis in UAE and particularly the exclusivity behind it. Does this essentially prevent some of your peers here to enter this market at all, whether it's via a ridesharing or direct sales model just trying to better understand that? Thank you.

JoeBen Bevirt

Thank you, Andres. This is JoeBen, and thank you for the question is was incredibly exciting to be in Dubai and to get to sign the definitive agreement for our taxi service there. This is a seminal agreement. It's something we've been working with with the roads and transport authority of Dubai for it many years now and getting this across the line in a definitive way and including the exclusive secure exclusivity that you mentioned, it is huge moment for the industry and a huge accomplishment for jobs and for the RGA.
And with regard to the exclusivity, again, we have a six year exclusive to operate the air taxi service in the Emirate. And so we're we're very excited about this. We're excited to be working on this with the R/GA win with our partner on infrastructure in Sky Sports and to really showcase the bringing together the three critical pieces that Dubai and the UAE have done, which is the regulatory and the infrastructure and the right aircraft to deliver meaningful value to customers. So again, really, really pleased with this and grateful for all of our partners and the support here.

Andres Sheppard

Thanks, JoeBen. That's very helpful. And maybe just as a quick follow up, so congratulations on completing the third stage of the FAA-type certification process, obviously, very exciting. Just wondering, can you give us maybe some color, what does the time line for the fourth step looks like particularly as you're now going to doing the four FAA credit testing, just trying to get a sense of what that time line looks like, what are some of the different milestones that we can look forward to just to identify how that is progressing? Thank you.

Didier Papadopoulos

Hey, Andres. This is Didier. Good to hear from you. Good question, and I feel like this is a good time to talk a bit about what FAA conformity and FAA four credit testing really is it really sets the standards and defines exactly what that is at the component level at the system level and at the aircraft level, which is really how you have to progress towards your certification and Stage 4 organization, really excited about what the team has been able to deliver last year, right, with 30 tests completed at the component level, having gone through exactly the process as outlined by the FAA.
It sets us up very well this year to expand across all of the base of the pyramid and execute more of those on hundreds of other tests and then progressing from there into the system, just as we just discussed, we will be starting with the tail system here, really excited about that.
And then moving into the airplane, maybe a good place on that also there are three essential elements that define what it takes one to get an FAA conformity and to be able to also get credit for the testing from the FAA one you have to have the design mature and release to the FAA because this is what they're going to use as the basis for you showing compliance.
And I feel we've demonstrated that really well last year, particularly with those component-level tests and are working towards that this year or the beginning of this year with the tail test two, you have to demonstrate the ability to build or manufactured to these designed on conforming lines. And we've done just that last year with four conforming lines now completed and are working expediency on any additional confirming lines that feed into the airplane.
So another check and a big win for the team on that one and three, possibly most importantly, to do a 4K test and 4K conformity on any area and the aircraft, you have to have gone through Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3 and then 4 for that specific task. But if you have not done that there's no point in having that discussion with the FDA and with the team now at the point where we closed on our Stage 3 and are working and submitting test plans on Stage 4 is exactly where we want to be really excited about really this year is what you're going to see all the progress and focus on that on that stage.

JoeBen Bevirt

Thanks, Didier. That's very comprehensive, appreciate it and congratulations again on the quarter. I'll pass it on.

Operator

Kristine Liwag, Morgan Stanley.

Kristine Liwag

Hey, good afternoon, JoeBen, Didier, Matt, and Teresa, and congratulations also on completing the third of the five stages of the FAA type certification process and being the first developer of EUV tool to accomplish this. So you know, maybe one follow-up question on from me to the question already asked on the stage four and stage five certification as we look forward on, Didier, is there anything that would surprise you on the Stage 4 and Stage 5?
And the reason for that is, you know, look at Gulf Stream right now is in its third year of the Stage 4 and 5 certification for the G700, especially with the change in the requirement where they need a line-by-line validation of the software for the fly-by-wire that's been an obstacle. Is there any read-across here for you and how confident are you guys in 2025 entry into service?

Didier Papadopoulos

Yeah, thanks, Kristine. I appreciate the question here. Look, I feel really good about where we are right now, particularly because you talked about years, this has been multiple years in the making getting to the point where Stage 3 is complete. We have been in lockstep with the FDA for a good amount of time where we're talking about all the details of the design of the third plan and the implementation. I think that gives me a lot of confidence in us moving into Stage 4 being in a very good position.
You talked about fly-by-wire by way of example, one of the most critical and important areas for plants is exactly our flight controls and the fly-by-wire. And we have spent quite a bit of time with the FAA on that relating to software, I really want to remind and reiterate, you know, software is not software verification, particularly is not new to Joby.
Our avionics acquisition team that's in Costa Rica has been doing this for many, many, many years, and they have demonstrated over the past few years that they can deliver on all expectations, both for Joby and external customers. And as I feel like, we're well positioned to walk through the software line. And oh, by the way, our software store plan has also been accepted. So we hit it both on the software side as well as on the functional side.

Kristine Liwag

Great. And then also on you look at the past few years, you guys have done a lot of partnerships with different countries, including your most recent exclusive deal, but then you've also got partnerships in South Korea and Japan, you know, can you guys talk about a little bit more, why does it seem to be some more attention on EV tolls across the different countries? And, you know, as you see these exclusive partnerships with one country. Could you see more are these rollout, especially as you get closer to certification?

JoeBen Bevirt

Yeah. Thanks, Kristine. So thank you for highlighting the incredible interest that we have from many international markets. I think we are we're considering continuing to see significant inbound here, but we're going to be very thoughtful and measured in the number of additional markets that we take on and really focus as much as we can on the incredible opportunities that we have. We already committed to, and we are very, very grateful to our partners.
As you mentioned, in Japan and Korea in the UAE. And then, of course, our incredible partnerships here in the US. We we may choose a select number of additional international markets. But again, we're going to really focus on the execution.

Kristine Liwag

And if I could squeeze one last question, you know, Matt, the $440 million to $470 million free cash flow usage for 2024 at the end of that on what would be the capacity on your lower volume manufacturing plant in Marina after that spend and you know, if you wanted to expand capacity beyond what you have in place? Like how much could that incremental cost?

Matthew Field

Yeah. Hi, Kristine So the way we think about the Marina, as Didier mentioned the end of this year, we'll be running at a rate of one aircraft per month. So that would be 12 aircraft. Obviously, in terms of capacity, we're working on ramping that up over time as our expansion comes onstream, that expansion would be online somewhere in 25, most likely based off kind of our present calculations. And that gives us the option to ramp up to 25. So we feel that's a good starting point as we lay the groundwork for international and domestic operations for go to market. And then obviously working on on further expansions from there.

Kristine Liwag

Great. Thank you very much, guys.

Operator

Savi Syth, Raymond James.

Savi Syth

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. And if I may just ask another certification question here. Just we haven't heard much on the G1 side. And in terms of when do you think the FAA might accept that? And just a clarification, based on Didier's comments, or are there items in the Stage 2 certification plans that are still placeholders or dependent on issue papers that are not yet finalized?

Didier Papadopoulos

Yeah. Good question. So -- and we love certification questions by the way. So we've been in constant touch with the FAA relating to the G1. Our understanding is the G1 release is coming up soon. But what's really important is that the FAA has a we're really grateful for that has been of keeping us up to up-to-date on all the expected changes in the G1.
And so we've been in constant touch and are aware of the content in there and what we can see from there is that we expect zero design changes to our aircraft based on the G1 changes coming. If you feel really, really confident about that based on what we've been able to see, that's really important.
The potential areas where there may be some applications are really associated with the documentation, rework and the compliance aspect of that. But none of these is expected to impact us particularly this year as we're focusing again on Stage 4. So we're fully focused on Stage 4. We know there are no design changes and then we're ready to go when the G1 shows up.

Savi Syth

Got it. And then just and you also had some really helpful information on kind of the number four credit testing and that's being done. Just could you put that in context of how many tests I think Didier, you mentioned hundreds of tests this year, just trying to put that 30 into context of kind of what needs to get done.

Didier Papadopoulos

We haven't really shared the exact numbers of that. I think the more important part of this, the relevance of the tests that we have talked about is they were path finders for additional test, those additional tests that are coming. So it's really about we've built the knowledge base, right? We know what the process of conforming parts we know what the process of submitting tax plans and getting those subsequently accepted are and we know how to execute on these. The rest as it relates to component is really about now accelerating. So we can move through this faster than we did last year.

Savi Syth

That's it, thank you.

Didier Papadopoulos

Thank you, Savi.

Operator

Austin Moeller, Canaccord Genuity.

Austin Moeller

Hi, good afternoon. Just my first question here. How do you currently feel in partnership with Toyota about the scalability and the manufacturability of the power sales as you ramp up production?

JoeBen Bevirt

Thanks, Austin. We feel very good about what we've been able to accomplish both from a most importantly from a safety standpoint, but also from a cycle life standpoint on an and performance standpoint on our other battery modules, we've done extensive testing over many years and just incredibly pleased with the performance across all of these dimensions.

Austin Moeller

Great. And just a follow-up. You mentioned you don't expect any major design changes on the current iteration of the aircraft. And I understand the last quarter, you've done 30 plus for credit component level task. But do you expect that the current iteration of the aircraft is has a sufficient weight and to really make sure that it can be certified under that, that powered with certification?

Didier Papadopoulos

Yeah. So the G1 and the associated start basis, as we have seen it with the FAA continues to be something we feel very confident about. Like I said, we've seen all the expected changes coming at least the ones that the FAA has shared with us, which we understand are comprehensive and we don't see any impact on our design as it relates to the EV toll configuration and our powerlift requirements.

Austin Moeller

Excellent. Thanks for the insights. Thank you.

Operator

Bill Peterson, JPMorgan.

Bill Peterson

Hi, good afternoon and nice job on the quarterly execution. I'm likely to get a little more granular on the commercial operations, I guess 2025 is pretty wide. When are you thinking closer to the start of the year or the end of the year? And I guess what would make it closer to the start versus the end, i.e., what's in your control? What's and I know it's dependent on the FAA or others. And I guess you know, with that in mind with that, you said earlier, I think that would maybe lead you to have started to buy out of the US. Does that what it could look like?

JoeBen Bevirt

Yeah. Thank you. So we are very pleased as we as we talked about with at the partnership in Dubai. And again, that's across the three critical dimensions. First, the regulatory, second, the infrastructure and third, having the right aircraft on. And specifically, on your question in terms of the timing that a lot of that comes down to the regulatory piece and we the approach that we're taking is leveraging all the incredible work that we've done with FAA and working closely with the GCA to ensure that that all of the work there happens in an expedient way.
And so again, we we're grateful for the partnership with the GCA, and they're working very closely with our team, and we'll continue to over the months to come with respect to specific timing within at 2025. We're not providing that at this time.

Bill Peterson

Okay. And just kind of wanted to follow up on earlier question on run rate. So you exit this year at 12 and in 2025, after the expansion, you'll be somewhere between 12 and 25, maybe exiting next year with the ability to make 25 aircraft. I guess how should we think about the run rate? Maybe one is what has been ready to ramp? Just trying to get a sense for as we sort of build our models out a few years, what I guess what you're going to ship commercially over the next, call it two to three, four years.

Matthew Field

Hi, Bill. So as you think about, Dayton, I really refer you back to how we talked about it last quarter. Right now we're really focused on getting our lines certified and up and running getting manufacturing processes dialed in because scaling inefficient process would be the worst thing a company could do.
And so we're really focused on that 12 and 25 but getting ready, as you said, for a measured approach to Ohio, starting small, as you you've seen us talk about before doing this in a very methodical way, starting small in this case with a small manufacturing operation, which gives us that kernel of employees building out the culture that allows us to scale and then followed by a methodical ramp up to eventually 500 aircraft on overtime, but it will be overtime and a more gradual approach to scaling just because that's the right way to scale a manufacturing plant. And it's the most prudent way to do it.

Bill Peterson

Yeah, it makes sense. And I may have missed it. But as we think about your use of cash this year, can you give us a little bit more granularity on CapEx versus OpEx? You said substantially out, but I guess what does that mean, how much government incentives can offset? And I guess how much of the OpEx growth is, I guess, slated for the go to market the first commercial aircraft, additional software engineers, app development, hiring, just [if you hire] to support the commercialization efforts, trying to get a sense versus certification and manufacturing spend?

Matthew Field

Yeah. So as we think about this year, we spent about $30 million in CapEx. I would expect us to roughly double next year and that's really driven by both building out the facility here in California, which will cross [24, 25], but also building out the equipment, building out the facility in Ohio. And so that's a big, lumpy step function in our CapEx.
The rest of it largely is OpEx. And that's going to be growing primarily manufacturing and certification folks because that is the bulk of our organization. We'll start early operations will be sending people down to Dubai to start there. And so we'll have some growth there. But the bulk of our operational growth will be around certification and manufacturing of our aircraft and buying parts like those things are all in there, right.

Bill Peterson

Just to be clear, you said next year, $60 million. [But you mean this year 2024] (multiple speakers) --

Matthew Field

I sign my checks with the right year, but I still have to think about it twice.

Bill Peterson

Okay. Thank you.

Matthew Field

Thank you.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) [Edison Yu, Deutsche Bank].

Edison Yu

Thanks for taking our questions. One to follow up on the design topic from some earlier and leaving the latest NTSB report you guys are talking about 4,200 maximum takeoff weight. Obviously the production vehicle is 5,300 as per your disclosure, can you give us a sense what zones that might occur and also on the latest aircraft and panel production, are we have that at the 5,300 already?

JoeBen Bevirt

Thanks, [Austin]. Yeah, so we are the 5,300 is the weight of the aircraft that we're taking through certification. And we're very pleased with the performance that we're achieving across all the different systems on the aircraft, and expect to -- it's getting talked about about the designs to stick with where they are.

Edison Yu

And in terms of the drivers, what were the drivers for the drivers of the increase in weight? Anything you can share on that?

JoeBen Bevirt

No, it's again -- the 4,200 vehicle was an aircraft that we have designed in 2017 and 2018 and began flying in early 2019. It has showed the incredible performance across all the different dimensions. Again, we have the the most performant aircraft in the market with we are in development with a 100 mile range, 200 mile an hour top speed and a really incredible acoustic signature, which we think it's something that's really underappreciated and something we've focused on since the beginning and which I don't think others have been able to achieve are prioritized in the right way. And we think this is critical to delivering operations too and to the markets where our customers want to go.

Operator

Savi Syth, Raymond James.

Savi Syth

Hey, thanks for the follow-up. I'm just kind of curious, you have announced several infrastructure partnerships and including this kind of Dubai operation and you are still working closely with Delta. Could you talk a little bit about how you're thinking about your kind of initial commercialization plan and how all of this kind of fits within within that kind of launch plan?

JoeBen Bevirt

Yeah, I think you saw, you know, on the infrastructure part, this is incredibly important piece of the business and an area where we're very, very grateful for our partnership with Delta and the investments they've made into the airports in LaGuardia, JFK, and LAX and to be able to build best in class infrastructure closely coupled to it, those terminals and to deliver seamless customer experiences as they get off Delta flights and on a job site.
And then also delivering incredible customer experiences with with our partner, Skyports in Dubai. And then as we build out infrastructure opportunities in markets around the world, this is the an incredible opportunity to, again to deliver the customer experience that we're and that we're looking for. And so as we as we go forward, infrastructure is going to be a more and more significant part of the conversation.

Savi Syth

I appreciate that the infrastructure that can be the long pole in the tent. But are you going to kind of wait to see how things progress to figure out where you launch operations? First, is that my understanding or I'm just trying to figure out how this all kind of comes together because you also have kind of charging in various airports are not tied to the Delta operation?

JoeBen Bevirt

Yeah, I think as you saw, we rolled out a bunch of different partnerships in or in other airports in different markets than the US. And so rolling out that infrastructure and the engagement there and the momentum we're seeing there is just absolutely fantastic.

Operator

Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Joby Aviation CEO, JoeBen Bevirt for closing comments.

JoeBen Bevirt

Yeah. Thank you so much. I think one of the things you'll I hope you took away from the call today was that this is more tangible than it's ever been before, and our team is incredibly well positioned to capitalize on this amazing market. I think you also heard that that our team is consistently knocking it out of the park on certification on manufacturing and on the commercialization.
And it's just I have to say that I feel incredibly privileged to I have the opportunity to work with the amazing partners we have around the world and with the spectacular team here at Joby Aviation that I'd like to express my sincere gratitude for delivering quarter-after-quarter. Thank you all so much for joining us today, and I hope you have a fantastic afternoon and evening.

Operator

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.