From city parks to busy streets: How Joby’s electric air taxi blends into urban soundscapes

Aug 28, 2025 — By Austin Thai, Acoustics Senior Engineer

Imagine this: you’re in a busy Los Angeles park. Cars hum, dogs bark, people laugh. Then, a Joby electric air taxi flies overhead. Can you hear it? 

From its early days, Joby designed its electric aircraft to fit seamlessly into city life. Every detail, including propeller shape, radius, blade count, and tip speed, was engineered from the ground-up to keep noise to a minimum.

To put our aircraft to the test, we went beyond the lab and into the soundscape of a real city. Partnering with researchers from Blue Ridge Research and Consulting, Joby engineers modeled how our eVTOL (electric vertical take off and landing) aircraft would sound against the everyday backdrop of Los Angeles, sirens, traffic, construction, and all.

The study modeled eVTOL and traditional helicopter flights between two familiar points in the LA area: a vertiport near the Los Angeles Convention Center downtown and a vertiport at John Wayne Airport.

The results offer a glimpse of what the future could actually feel like when our aircraft begin flying over cities — quieter, cleaner, and seamlessly integrated into daily life. Here’s what we discovered.

Revolutionary noise performance in real-world urban conditions

We expect minimal impact to communities from the noise generated by our aircraft. Over an entire roundtrip flight between the locations we modeled, noise from our aircraft was greater than the ambient noise for only 0.17 square miles. When our aircraft is cruising (i.e. not taking off or landing, which requires more thrust), this dropped to 0.004 square miles. To put this in perspective, noise from a traditional helicopter on the same route was above ambient conditions for 45 square miles, potentially disrupting thousands of people.

We also examined particularly noise-sensitive locations near the vertiports, including a school, university and two parks under the flight path. Even at these locations, our modeling shows operations at or below background noise levels. Helicopters, by comparison, remain louder than background noise for nearly a minute during flight in some locations.

An advanced approach to understanding aircraft noise

This research builds on NASA's Advanced Air Mobility National Campaign, where we demonstrated our aircraft’s revolutionary low noise performance in controlled conditions. We then extended this work to real urban environments by combining our NASA-validated acoustic data with comprehensive ambient noise modeling, creating a novel method for assessing aircraft noise in city settings.

We used acoustic data from our NASA cruise tests and high-fidelity simulations for takeoff and landing to predict how the aircraft sounds from all directions. This data was then used to predict noise across the metro area.

The innovation came from combining these aircraft noise profiles with a machine learning model trained on ambient noise from 789 locations across the United States. This allowed us to see how our aircraft would actually be perceived by communities within LA's real urban environment.

What this means for communities

Traditional helicopters face restrictions in many cities due to community noise concerns, with limitations on flight paths, operational hours, and acceptable usage primarily driven by noise and emissions issues.

The study suggests our electric aircraft could offer a different approach – our aircraft may operate with significantly reduced community noise impact compared to conventional helicopters and with zero operating emissions. When aircraft can operate at or below ambient urban noise levels, it opens possibilities for more integrated transportation networks without the acoustic trade-offs that have historically limited urban air mobility. This means communities could benefit from enhanced mobility options while maintaining the quality of their urban environments.

Looking ahead

Every city has a unique soundscape, especially near schools, hospitals, and parks. At Joby, we're measuring the ambient noise around proposed vertiports and using new flight test data to refine our acoustic modeling. We are bringing quiet, practical urban air mobility closer to reality.  

And we want to be transparent with our work! Check it out yourself – you might be surprised at just how quiet it is, especially compared to helicopters or jets. Download the newly launched Joby Sounds app and hear it in real-world settings, available on iOS and macOS in the Apple App Store.