Japan's 'flying car' gets off the bottom, with a rider aboard
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The decades-old imagine zipping around in the sky as simply as driving on highways could be becoming less illusory.
Japan’s SkyDrive Inc., among the myriads of “flying car” projects all over the world, has carried out an effective though modest test flight with one individual aboard.
In a video displayed to reporters on Friday, a contraption that looked like a slick motorcycle with propellers lifted about two meters off the ground, and hovered in a netted area for four minutes.
Tomohiro Fukuzawa, who heads the SkyDrive effort, said he hopes “the flying car” can be converted to a real-life product by 2023, but he acknowledged that making it safe was critical.
“Of the world’s a lot more than 100 flying car projects, only a handful has succeeded with a person on board,” he told The Associated Press. “I am hoping many people would want to ride it and feel safe.”
The machine up to now can fly for five to ten minutes but if that may become 30 minutes, it has more potential, including exports to places like China, Fukuzawa said.
Unlike airplanes and helicopters, eVTOL, or “electric vertical takeoff and landing,” vehicles offer quick point-to-point personal travel, at least in principle.
They could do away with the trouble of airports and traffic jams and the price tag on hiring pilots, they could fly automatically.
Battery sizes, air traffic control and other infrastructure issues are among the many potential challenges to commercializing them.
“Many things have to happen,” said Sanjiv Singh, professor at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, who co-founded Near Earth Autonomy, near Pittsburgh, which can be focusing on an eVTOL aircraft.
“If indeed they cost $10 million, nobody is going to buy them. If indeed they fly for five minutes, no one will probably buy them. If indeed they fallout of the sky once in awhile, no one will probably get them,” Singh said in a telephone interview.
The SkyDrive project commenced humbly as a volunteer project called Cartivator in 2012, with funding by top Japanese companies including automaker Toyota Motor Corp., electronics company Panasonic Corp. and video-game developer Bandai Namco.
A demonstration flight three years ago went poorly. Nonetheless 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.
JAPAN government is bullish on “the Jetsons” vision, with a “road map” for business services by 2023, and expanded commercial use by the 2030s, stressing its prospect of connecting remote areas and providing lifelines in disasters.
Experts compare the buzz over flying cars to the days when the aviation industry got started with the Wright Brothers and the auto industry with the Ford Model T.
Lilium of Germany, Joby Aviation in California and Wisk, a jv between Boeing Co and Kitty Hawk Corp, are also focusing on eVTOL projects.
Sebastian Thrun, leader of Kitty Hawk, said it took time for airplanes, cell phones and self-driving cars to win acceptance.
“But the time taken between technology and social adoption could be more compressed for eVTOL vehicles, he said"
Source: https://japantoday.com
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