The Asian Reporter
Pacific Northwest News q Volume 30 Number 10 q September 7, 2020 q www.asianreporter.com
Japan’s “flying car” gets off
ground, with a person aboard
FUTURISTIC FLIGHT. This photo taken last month shows a test flight of a manned “flying car” at the Toyota Test Field in Toyota, central Japan. Japan’s SkyDrive Inc., among a myriad of “flying car” projects around the
world, has carried out a successful though modest test flight with one person aboard. (©SkyDrive/Cartivator 2020 via AP)
feet off the ground then hovered in a netted 10 minutes, but if that can become 30 many potential challenges to com-
By Yuri Kageyama
minutes, it will have more potential, mercializing them.
area for four minutes.
AP Business Writer
“Many things have to happen,” said
Tomohiro Fukuzawa, who heads the including exports to places like China,
OKYO — The decades-old dream of
Fukuzawa
said.
Sanjiv
Singh, professor at the Robotics
SkyDrive effort, said he hopes “the flying
zipping around in the sky as simply car” can be made into a real-life product by
Unlike airplanes and helicopters, Institute at Carnegie Mellon University,
as driving on highways may be 2023, but he acknowledged that making it eVTOL, or “electric vertical takeoff and who co-founded Near Earth Autonomy,
becoming less illusory.
landing,” vehicles offer quick point-to- near Pittsburgh, which is also working on
safe was critical.
Japan’s SkyDrive Inc., among a myriad
“Of the world’s more than 100 flying car point personal travel, at least in principle.
an eVTOL aircraft.
of “flying car” projects around the world, projects, only a handful has succeeded
They could do away with the hassle of
“If they cost $10 million, no one is going
has carried out a successful though modest with a person on board,” he told The airports and traffic jams and the cost of to buy them. If they fly for five minutes, no
test flight with one person aboard.
hiring pilots, if they could fly auto- one is going to buy them. If they fall out of
Associated Press.
In a video shown to reporters in August,
“I hope many people will want to ride it matically.
the sky every so often, no one is going to
a contraption that looked like a slick and feel safe.”
Battery sizes, air traffic control, and buy them,” Singh said in a telephone inter-
motorcycle with propellers lifted several
The machine so far can fly for just five to other infrastructure issues are among the
Continued on page 7
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