SkyDrive joins roundtable to help realise potential of ‘flying cars’ in Osaka, Japan

Sky­Drive, the Japan­ese eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er, has joined an ongo­ing round­table which focus­es on the imple­men­ta­tion of ‘fly­ing cars’ in the city of Osa­ka.

The round­table was set up as the core organ­i­sa­tion to accel­er­ate the ini­tia­tive led by the Pub­lic-Pri­vate Con­fer­ence for Future Air Mobil­i­ty, which was set up by the Japan­ese Min­istry of Econ­o­my, Trans­port and Indus­try (METI). An inau­gur­al cer­e­mo­ny and first meet­ing of the round­table was held on Novem­ber 17th.

In a press release announc­ing the news, Sky­Drive said: “We see the Osa­ka-Kan­sai Japan World Expo 2025 as a mile­stone on the road toward the full-scale real­i­sa­tion of an air mobil­i­ty soci­ety and as such, will aim to take a lead­ing role in the upcom­ing round­table con­fer­ences, seek­ing to dri­ve for­ward the dis­cus­sion and organ­ise prac­ti­cal demon­stra­tions of how fly­ing cars work and can trans­form urban mobil­i­ty.

“We intend to liaise with all con­cerned par­ties and make con­crete pro­pos­als to con­tribute to the work of the Pub­lic-Pri­vate Con­fer­ence of Japan and will strive to improve social accep­tance of fly­ing cars, in part­ner­ship with a group of stake­hold­ers that we expect to include about 40 com­pa­nies.”

At the roundtable’s inau­gur­al cer­e­mo­ny, Hiro­fu­mi Yoshimu­ra, the Gov­er­nor of Osa­ka Pre­fec­ture, added: “Osa­ka, the bay area in par­tic­u­lar, is suit­able for the fly­ing car busi­ness both geopo­lit­i­cal­ly and as an eco­nom­ic hub. The spir­it of Yat­tem­i­na­hare (Just do it) is val­ued in Osa­ka. Just get on with it.”

In future, Sky­Drive will work on the cre­ation of a new indus­try in coop­er­a­tion with the nation­al gov­ern­ment, Osa­ka Pre­fec­ture, and the com­pa­nies par­tic­i­pat­ing in the round­table, with “Safe­ty is our first pri­or­i­ty” always in mind.

The com­pa­ny exhib­it­ed its SD-03 ‘fly­ing car’ design at the Fly­ing Car Tech­nol­o­gy Exhi­bi­tion and Con­fer­ence in Tokyo last week, after com­plet­ing a suc­cess­ful flight demo and rais­ing ¥3.9 bil­lion in Series B fund­ing in August.

The SD-03 mea­sures two meters high, four meters wide and four meters long, only requir­ing as much space on the ground as two parked cars.

The pow­er­train con­sists of elec­tric motors that dri­ve rotors deployed in four loca­tions, with each loca­tion hous­ing two rotors that indi­vid­u­al­ly rotate in oppo­site direc­tions, each dri­ven by its own motor.

The use of eight motors is a means of ensur­ing safe­ty in emer­gency sit­u­a­tions dur­ing flight and as such aims to address com­pli­ance stan­dards and allay poten­tial reg­u­la­to­ry con­cerns.