TOKYO (AP) – The decades-old dream of running in the sky as fast as driving on highways can be less illusory.
Japan’s SkyDrive Inc., among the myriads of “flying car” projects around the world, has performed a successful, albeit modest test flight with one person on board.
In a video shown to reporters Friday, a counter that resembled a smooth motorcycle with propellers lifted several feet (1-2 meters) off the ground, and hovered in a netted area for four minutes.
Tomohiro Fukuzawa, head of SkyDrive’s effort, said he hoped “the flying car” could be turned into a real-life product by 2023, but acknowledged that making it safe was critical.
“Of the more than 100 flying car projects in the world, only a handful have succeeded with one person on board,” he told The Associated Press.
“I hope a lot of people want to ride it and feel safe.”
The machine may only fly five to 10 minutes so far, but if that could be 30 minutes, it will have more potential, including exports to places like China, Fukuzawa said.
Unlike airplanes and helicopters, eVTOL, like “electric vertical takeoffs and landings”, offer cars fast personal journeys from point to point, at least in principle.
They could eliminate the hassle of airports and traffic jams and the cost of hiring pilots, they could fly automatically.
Battery measurements, air traffic control and other infrastructure issues are among the many potential challenges to commercialize them.
“A lot of things need to happen,” said Sanjiv Singh, a professor at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University who co-founded Near Earth Autonomy near Pittsburgh, which is also working on an eVTOL aircraft.
“If they cost $ 10 million, no one will buy them. If they fly for 5 minutes, no one will buy them. If they fall out of the sky so often, no one will buy them, ‘Singh said in a phone interview.
The SkyDrive project began humbly as a volunteer project called Cartivator in 2012, funded by top Japanese companies such as automaker Toyota Motor Corp., electronics company Panasonic Corp. and video game company Bandai Namco.
A demonstration flight three years ago went badly. But it has improved and the project recently received another round of funding, of 3.9 billion yen ($ 37 million), including from the Development Bank of Japan.
The Japanese government is Bullish on the vision of the “Jetsons”, with a “roadmap” for business services by 2023, and expanded commercial use by the 2030s, emphasizing its potential for connecting remote areas and providing lifelines in the ramp.
Experts compare the buzz about flying cars to the days when the aviation industry started with the Wright Brothers and the car industry with the Ford Model T.
Lilium of Germany, Joby Aviation in California and Wisk, a joint venture between Boeing Co. and Kitty Hawk Corp., are also working on eVTOL projects.
Sebastian Thrun, director of Kitty Hawk, said it took time for planes, mobile phones and self-driving cars to gain acceptance.
“But the time between technology and social adoption may be more compressed for eVTOL cars,” he said.
___
Chisato Tanaka contributed to this report.
Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama
.
