Japanese Finance Minister Observes SkyDrive eVTOL Flight Test

Japan’s Finance Min­is­ter, Sat­su­ki Kataya­ma, has vis­it­ed SkyDrive’s flight test facil­i­ty in Yam­aguchi City to observe a demon­stra­tion of the company’s elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (eVTOL) air­craft and dis­cuss plans for com­mer­cial deploy­ment.

The vis­it took place on 31 Octo­ber, with Sky­Drive pro­vid­ing a brief­ing on its air­craft, test­ing facil­i­ties and devel­op­ment roadmap. The demon­stra­tion flight was con­duct­ed with­out an onboard pilot, using auto­mat­ic flight con­trol and remote pilot­ing.

Accord­ing to Sky­Drive, the air­craft cov­ered 2.2km dur­ing a flight last­ing approx­i­mate­ly six min­utes. It reached a max­i­mum speed of 78km/h and an alti­tude of 30 metres.

Fol­low­ing the flight, Kataya­ma inspect­ed the air­craft, with com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives explain­ing its struc­tur­al design and sys­tem redun­dan­cy. She com­ment­ed on its noise lev­els and manoeu­vra­bil­i­ty, describ­ing the air­craft as very qui­et and not­ing its abil­i­ty to change direc­tion quick­ly.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Suzu­ki Motor Cor­po­ra­tion, SkyDrive’s man­u­fac­tur­ing part­ner, also attend­ed the vis­it. Nao­mi Ishii, Suzuki’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive direc­tor and exec­u­tive vice-pres­i­dent, and Hidetoshi Kumashiro, senior man­ag­ing offi­cer and exec­u­tive gen­er­al man­ag­er of bat­tery devel­op­ment, out­lined man­u­fac­tur­ing plans and the com­pa­nies’ ambi­tions for over­seas mar­kets.

The vis­it comes as Japan seeks to devel­op its advanced air mobil­i­ty sec­tor. Under the government’s Growth Strat­e­gy, approved by Cab­i­net in July 2026, eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy is includ­ed among 17 strate­gic fields iden­ti­fied for invest­ment with­in the avi­a­tion and space sec­tor.

Gov­ern­ment engage­ment is an impor­tant part of SkyDrive’s com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion plans, as the com­pa­ny works towards intro­duc­ing its air­craft into ser­vice. The vis­it pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate its cur­rent flight-test capa­bil­i­ties and dis­cuss the indus­tri­al and man­u­fac­tur­ing require­ments asso­ci­at­ed with future deploy­ment.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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