In news so 2020 it barely shocks us, flying cars have now become a reality. We’ve long been teased the prospect of taking to the skies to avoid traffic and enjoy a scenic flight from A to B, but it would seem that flying cars are now only a little ways off, after a successful test flight in Japan last month.
SkyDrive, a company backed by Toyota, successfully tested a manned flying car, the SD-03, on August 25, 2020, in a controlled environment at a large Toyota Test Field.
During the flight, the single-person vehicle took off, circled the lot for around four minutes, and touched back down smoothly. It was a huge leap for flying car industry and a very positive step for SkyDrive as they now try to bring the car to the market on a mass scale.
According to ABC News Australia, Tomohiro Fukuzawa, CEO of SkyDrive, hopes the new technology will be available to the Japanese market within three years.
He says that with the current technology, a flying vehicle will be able to transport two people up to five kilometres.
Of course, five kilometres is not very far, however in a densely populated city like Tokyo, the distance would be enough to cut a fair amount of time off a person’s commute through roads and traffic.
Distance aside, other issues facing SkyDrive include the vehicle’s noise (it sounds like your head is inside a beehive), and the fact the cars are powered by batteries — great for the environment, however, electric charging stations will need to be available to drivers (pilots?), who operate the flying cars.
We’d also hope those propellers might get some kind of a cover in the next prototype. We imagine those things could take someone’s head off in a matter of seconds.