A Japanese company has announced the successful test drive of a flying car

Sky Drive Inc. the Japanese company has conducted the public demonstration on August 25, the company informed in a news release, at the Toyota Test Field, one of the largest in Japan and home to the car company’s development base. It was the first public demonstration for a flying car in Japanese history. 

The car, named SD-03 model, an electrical vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle, manned with a pilot, took off and circled the field for about four minutes.

CEO Statement:

“We are extremely excited to have achieved Japan’s first-ever manned flight of a flying car in the two years since we founded SkyDrive… with the goal of commercializing such aircraft,” CEO Tomohiro Fukuzawa said in a statement.

Development Of SkyDrive:

A Japanese company said it had completed a manned flight of its electrical vertical takeoff and landing machine. Experts say the technology needs work and that it will be expensive.

In the 1880s, the first automobile was developed and about two decades later, the Wright brothers in North Carolina invented the first successful airplane. Today, the world is closer to combining those two concepts as a Japanese tech company said it completed a manned test flight of a “flying car.”

Specifications:

The aircraft has one seat and operates with eight motors and two propellers on each corner. It lifted about 3 meters (or about 10 feet) into the air and was operated by a pilot, the company said.

SkyDrive:

Tomohiro Fukuzawa, SkyDrive’s chief executive, said on Saturday that five years ago there were various prototypes of flying cars, usually with fixed wings. SkyDrive’s product, he said, was one of the most compact in size and was lighter compared with other designs.

SkyDrive was started in 2012 by members of a volunteer organization called Cartivator, and the company began developing a “flying car” in 2014, according to the website.

Safety And Design:

Safety is one of two challenges preventing the technology from becoming widely used, said Derya Aksaray, an assistant professor of aerospace engineering and mechanics at the University of Minnesota. Safe autonomous technology for eVTOL aircrafts is still being developed, Professor Aksaray said.

“These vehicles need to look at their environment, assess the situation and act accordingly,” she said. “They cannot wait for a pilot or an operator to say, ‘Now do this, now do that.’ We cannot wait for that kind of micromanagement of the vehicle.”

The other challenge is design: The vehicles should be powerful enough to carry any necessary weight, yet quiet enough to fly at undetermined low altitudes, she said.

Efficiency:

Ella Atkins, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan, expressed mixed views on the practicality of eVTOL machines.

“They are going to be more energy efficient than helicopters that use a lot of fuel but they will be less energy efficient than cars because they have to lift themselves,” she said. “From a cost perspective, they won’t be practical to go to the grocery store.”

Price:

Mr. Fukuzawa said SkyDrive plans to begin selling a two-seat version of its eVTOL by 2023 for about $300,000 to $500,000. He projected the price will decrease by 2030.

“With any new technology, it will be very expensive in the beginning,” Professor Aksaray said.

Professor Atkins echoed that observation and said it’s unlikely that private citizens with a modest income would be able to afford one in the next 20 years.

Goals of SkyDrive:

“If this becomes successful,” she said, “I think that would definitely create a different means of transportation. We are going to benefit a lot by reducing congestion and overcoming the geographical constraints of ground mobility”.

For more interesting information follow usthenookandcorner.wordpress.com

Instagramhttps://instagram.com/the_nook_and_corner?igshid=1ax1x8pu970ou

Mailthenookandcornerblog@gmail.com

Twitter  @thenookandcorn1

Source: skyDrive.com, nytimes.com