Toyota is contributing $500 million to a business that will launch commercial flights in the upcoming year. Since 2020, the carmaker has partnered with California-based Joby Aviation, and with this most recent financial outflow, Toyota has invested a total of $894 million in the company.

The additional funding will be given to Joby in two installments; the first will arrive in Santa Cruz later this year, and the remaining funds are expected in 2025, the year the company intends to truly launch its electric air taxi operation.

“With this additional investment, we are excited to see Joby certify their aircraft and shift to commercial production,” said Toyota’s Tetsuo “Ted” Ogawa. ”We share Joby’s view that sustainable flight will be central to alleviating today’s persistent mobility challenges.”

Since almost seven years ago, the two companies have collaborated as Joby gets closer to launching its first paid flights. Joby has started construction on an additional plant that could double its manufacturing capacity, and the third aircraft just came off the company’s pilot production line.

In August, Joby declared that it had finished four of the five processes required for certification and that it planned to launch its first commercial flying service in Dubai around the end of 2025. Prior to that, a series of test flights must be conducted by the air taxi team throughout the first part of the following year.

Not all automakers are investing on flying taxis, just Toyota. At CES in Las Vegas earlier this year, Hyundai unveiled its 120 mph (193 km/h) S-A2 air taxi and announced that a commercial vehicle will be ready by 2028.

Last year, shortly after Stellantis announced that it was expanding its cooperation with Archer Aviation and would be building the company’s Midnight aircraft in Covington, Georgia, China’s Xpeng X2 eVOTL (electric vertical take-off and landing) made its initial debut flight. Stellantis said this summer that it has invested an additional $55 million in the Archer project and that the new plant will be operational by the end of 2024.