SkyDrive to launch SD-05 air taxi service at World Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan

Sky­Drive has unveiled the design of its SD-05 com­mer­cial mod­el fly­ing car which it is plan­ning to launch an air taxi ser­vice dur­ing the world expo­si­tion sched­uled for 2025 in Osa­ka, Japan.

Sky­Drive design direc­tor Taku­mi Yamamo­to said: “Two years have passed since the announce­ment of the SD-03, which suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed its pub­lic manned flight test in August 2020, as we announce its suc­ces­sor, the SD-05.”

The SD-05 is a two-seat, elec­tric-pow­ered com­pact air­craft oper­at­ed by a dri­ver-pilot, with its flight sta­bil­i­ty secured by a com­put­er-con­trolled flight sys­tem.

Sky­Drive is acquir­ing a type certificate2 for the SD-05 from the Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture, Trans­port and Tourism (MLIT), as the first of its kind in Japan, which is designed to trav­el up to 10 km at a max­i­mum cruise speed of 100 km/h.

Poten­tial appli­ca­tions for the SD-05 now being con­sid­ered include a tran­sit option where a short-cut is need­ed due to geo­graph­i­cal con­di­tions or exist­ing pub­lic trans­porta­tion is detoured. In the Osa­ka Bay area, where numer­ous tourist attrac­tions are locat­ed, bod­ies of water some­times pre­vent or hin­der direct access by pub­lic trans­porta­tion.

Get­ting from one tourist venue to anoth­er can be dif­fi­cult and time-con­sum­ing, in some cas­es tak­ing as long as 40 min­utes to trav­el just one kilo­me­ter, while the SD-05 makes the trip in five min­utes.

Being able to take off and land in a small space, includ­ing on a rooftop, the SD-05 is expect­ed to assist med­ical work­ers who must trav­el quick­ly to pro­vide need­ed assis­tance.

“Sky­Drive will con­tin­ue to design the dreams of the future with the aim of real­is­ing sky
roads,” con­clud­ed Yamamo­to.

Sky­Drive set up a US office in Sep­tem­ber 2022, for the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing ‘last mile’ air trans­porta­tion, hav­ing been joint­ly devel­op­ing the mar­ket with local author­i­ties and part­ner com­pa­nies.

Ear­li­er this month, the Japan Osa­ka Pre­fec­tur­al Gov­ern­ment allo­cat­ed grants to eight domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al con­sor­tiums to assist its devel­op­ment of the eVTOL indus­try ahead of the 2025 World Expo.

In Novem­ber 2020, Sky­Drive joined an ongo­ing round­table which focus­es on the imple­men­ta­tion of ‘fly­ing cars’ in the city of Osa­ka, con­vened as the core organ­i­sa­tion to accel­er­ate the ini­tia­tive led by the Pub­lic-Pri­vate Con­fer­ence for Future Air Mobil­i­ty organ­ised by the Japan­ese Min­istry of Econ­o­my, Trans­port and Indus­try (METI).

https://youtu.be/36tDLW-mFiU