Airlines may be early soon

Jobi Airlines reached an initial agreement with the Saudi investor and bloc, Abdul Latifa (ALJ) to distribute up to 200 electric aircraft estimated at about one billion dollars in the coming years.

If completed, it can provide partnership Jobi With a highway to achieve the liquefaction of its vertical take -off and landing in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

“The question that people asked is, how will you bear the income, and how quickly this happens?” Paul Sciara, CEO of Joby Board of Directors, who is famous for Pinterest, said, Techcrunch. “And I think what this shows is that with direct sales, there is a way to expand early at a lower cost by thinking about distributors partners in the gave geographical areas. This is the first thing that we hope will be a number of ads on this front.”

The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding to explore the distribution agreement on Tuesday. Although the Memorandum of Understanding is not a significant and completely sealed deal, the sources familiar with the agreement say it will be able to share more concrete details later this year.

The deal will be among the first cases to start EvTol, which descends into the distributor’s partner to his plane. Joby also plans to own and operate its own aircraft in the United States and other markets, and partnership with airlines and other carriers in countries like Japan.

Alj is a perfect partner for several reasons. First, the company’s relationship with Toyota – which just closed the first segment of $ 250 million of its total 500 million dollars investment in Jobi – Managing deep. Alj became the exclusive distributor of Toyota in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1955 and grew to be one of the largest Toyota and Lexus independent in the world. Alj also participated in Toyota series, which is led by Toyota for 2020 Funding round.

Besides their mutual relationships, Sciara says that Alj has “a lot of infrastructure on the ground, not only for the sales process, but also to obtain experimental support, training and maintenance.”

“All this will be very important to ensure that sales have not been reduced, but were successful on the long arc,” Sciara told Techcrunch:

He pointed out that, as a 80 -year -old network of various companies, Alj is also close to the Saudi government in addition to a number of potential customers, including restoration and tourism projects such as the Red Sea project and the ALULA project.

Despite the promising partnership in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Joby’s Go-To Market strategy will remain its launch in Dubai next year, with an American market to follow up.

“What shows this is how we apply the repression beyond some of the primary markets,” said Sciarra. “This type of structure, where we find the appropriate local partner who can help us sell and support, will be a way to reach the geographical areas that may not be first in our list, but allow us to arrogate them more quickly.”

Jobi’s deal with AFJ comes amid unprecedented levels of cooperation between the US government and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the worlds of artificial intelligence, technological infrastructure, and energy. Last month, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, agreed to invest $ 20 billion in artificial intelligence and energy infrastructure centers in the United States, and American technology giants such as Google, Oracle, Salesforce, AMD and Uber have pledged 80 billion dollars towards transformational technologies in both countries, According to the White House.