Joby hosted CNN at their Electric Flight Base to experience their aircraft in flight and discuss Joby's pursuit of "a cheaper, quieter and greener means of commercial flying."

New York (CNN) The van rumbled through the desert in central California. Scorched Earth from controlled burns lined one side of dirt road we were traveling along. Surely, this van needed new shocks.

The 105-degree heat bore down on us as we rounded some brush and came across a barren airstrip. One hanger with an adjacent clutter of trailers lining one side of a runway. And there it was: an aircraft that looked straight out of a scifi comic book. With its six propellers, it wasn't your typical helicopter, but it wasn't a plane either.

What we were looking at was Joby Aviation's electric solution to air travel -- what's called an eVTOL aircraft, which stands for electric vertical take off and landing. As the name suggests, the aircraft can take off and land like a helicopter but fly like a plane.

"It's significantly safer, significantly faster and significantly quieter than the helicopters that are out there today," Paul Sciarra, Executive Chairman of Joby Aviation and Co-Founder of Pinterest, told CNN Business, though Sciarra's claims could not immediately be verified.

Electric trains have been shuttling passengers back and forth for over a century. Electric cars have existed nearly as long, though they've gotten a big boost in the last decade. But while the aviation era dawned at the beginning of the 20th century, it's been almost entirely reliant on the internal combustion of petroleum products ever since.

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