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SkyDrive’s SD-03 flying car put on display outside of Japan for first time at CES 2022

Sky­Drive has unveiled its SD-03 com­pact fly­ing vehi­cle at CES 2022, which is the first time the com­pa­ny has dis­played the full-scale mod­el out­side of Japan.

The Tokyo-based star­tup’s fly­ing car was first dis­played to the pub­lic at The Fly­ing Car Tech­nol­o­gy and Exhi­bi­tion Con­fer­ence, which was held in the city in Novem­ber 2021. The SD-03 has been designed to ver­ti­cal­ly take off and land to allow fast and safe door-to-door trans­porta­tion any­where, includ­ing uses for emer­gency res­cue.

Designed to be the world’s small­est eVTOL mod­el as a means of trans­porta­tion, the SD-03 mea­sures two metres high, four metres wide and four metres long – only requir­ing as much space on the ground as two parked cars.

The com­pa­ny con­duct­ed the first pub­lic flight demo of its new sin­gle-seater SD-03 fly­ing car in Japan in August 2021, with a four-minute flight being car­ried out at the 2.5‑acre Toy­ota test Field. It is one of the country’s largest test fields and home to the company’s devel­op­ment base.

Take­hi­ro Sato, Sky­Drive Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer, said: “The SD-03 mod­el is the cul­mi­na­tion of our exper­tise in drone tech­nolo­gies and aero­dy­nam­ic engi­neer­ing. What we want to see in the future is that SkyDrive’s emis­sion-free vehi­cles take off from and land in your park­ing lot and heli­pads atop build­ings, mak­ing door-to-door air trav­el a real­is­tic choice of dai­ly urban trans­porta­tion. We are work­ing hard­er and faster than ever to make this once-in-a-cen­tu­ry mobil­i­ty rev­o­lu­tion a real­i­ty.”

Sky­Drive has also advanced towards com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion, with the Japan­ese trans­porta­tion ministry’s accep­tance of its type cer­tifi­cate appli­ca­tion for SD-05 — a major mile­stone that no oth­er fly­ing vehi­cle devel­op­ers have reached in Japan. The mod­el is cur­rent­ly under devel­op­ment and eyed as an air taxi for World Expo 2025 in Osa­ka.

In his New Year’s Press Con­fer­ence held on Tues­day, Japan Prime Min­is­ter Fumio Kishi­da, said: “In order to imple­ment fly­ing cars ahead of the rest of the world in time for the Osa­ka-Kan­sai Expo sched­uled to be held in 2025, we will not only work with the rel­e­vant min­istries and agen­cies, such as the Min­istry of Econ­o­my, Trade and Indus­try and the Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture, Trans­port and Tourism, but also with the pri­vate sec­tor, experts, and local gov­ern­ments.

“Togeth­er, we will devel­op the nec­es­sary sys­tems, such as safe­ty stan­dards for air­craft and oper­a­tion man­age­ment, and devel­op relat­ed tech­nolo­gies.”

CES is one of the world’s largest tech­nol­o­gy trade shows that takes place annu­al­ly in Las Vegas. CES 2021 made his­to­ry by bring­ing togeth­er more than 2,000 com­pa­nies, includ­ing 700 star­tups online — a scale unheard of for all-dig­i­tal events.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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