As the pandemic crushed the speed of innovation, most flying car projects supported by the giants of the American generation remained entrenched. But a Japanese startup is silently taking a prototype to the sky and aims to make flying taxis a truth until 2023.
SkyDrive, founded in Tokyo, presented a flight verification of its SD-03 flying car style this month in the Japanese city of Toyota; a video released on Friday. The single-seat car, powered through a battery and 4 pairs of propellers, rose six feet above the floor and floated into a net control domain for about five minutes. More importantly, the car had a driving force on board.
It was SkyDrive’s first crewed flight in the SD-03 style. The company, subsidized through Toyota (the car manufacturer), targets the prototype in a two-seater commercial style until 2023. It is the same calendar set through the Japanese government to deploy a flying taxi service in dense cities such as Tokyo and Osaka.
Currently, the SkyDrive style can fly five to ten minutes at a low speed of several miles depending on the time. The next step is to increase your speed to 60 kilometers depending on the time (40 mph) and increase the flight duration to 30 minutes. This would mean an ability to fly nonstop for 20 miles, making the car an ideal candidate for export to other countries, CEO Tomohiro Fukuzawa said.
“Of the more than one hundred flying car projects in the world, only a few have been successful with one user on board,” Fukuzawa told The Associated Press friday. “I hope many other people need to drive it and feel safe.”
A flying car, or vertical takeoff and landing vehicle (VTOL), is different from an aircraft or helicopter in the sense that it does not require a special takeoff and landing and is designed to provide immediate door-to-door delivery through lanes. and the air.
The SkyDrive is about 4 meters long and two meters high, small enough to have compatibility in two medium parking spaces and ideal for urban use.
“In evolved countries, flying cars deserve to be used as a means of transport to mitigate congestion and respond to disasters, while in emerging countries they are more likely to be used as a means of transport that requires much less infrastructure.” said corporate in a preview this month.
In the United States, several flying car projects have been carried out for years. But none of them have been marketed because of infrastructure and regulatory problems, such as their own problems. In May, Uber reduced the length of the branch supporting the progression of its flying cockpit as the coronavirus hit its car-sharing business hard.
Another pioneer, Kitty Hawk Corp., introduced through Google co-founder Larry Page a decade ago, has also recently replaced the direction of his flying car search. In June, the company closed the equipment of its ultralight flying car model, the “Flyer”, to concentrate on building a larger model.
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