Flying Car Takes Off In Japan With First Manned Test Flight

When Michael J. Fox said, “all these people must’ve got here in flying cars,” on Jimmy Kimmel’s live audience tribute to the Back to the Future franchise on October 21, 2015, the date Doc and Marty arrived in the future aboard their flying Delorean, Kimmel’s reply summed it up aptly. “No, no, we never figured out flying cars.”

Well, Japanese startup SkyDrive may have just figured it out.

Last Friday in Tokyo, SkyDrive Inc. announced at a press conference that it had successfully completed its first manned test flight, and showed video to prove it. In footage shot earlier in August at its base near Toyota City, the single-seater SD-03 flying car prototype, operated by a test pilot, used its four pairs of propellers to lift off and cruise at an altitude of around 6 feet in a heavily fenced off test zone. It may not have cleared the surrounding trees, but it showed that the vehicle could cruise untethered at low speeds with drone-like stability for a flight time of around up to 10 minutes.

According to a commentator familiar with flying car projects, other companies including Lilium of Germany and Joby Aviation of California, are also working on electric take-off and landing vehicles (eVTOL) projects but many have been stalled during the coronavirus pandemic. SkyDrive may not be the first company to complete a test flight, but it is the first firm to combine a successful untethered test flight of its soon-to-be-marketed flying car while also receiving government backing and significant funding to achieve its end goal of commercialization by 2023.