PODCAST: Recapping SkyDrive’s Big Year with CEO Tomohiro Fukuzawa and Looking Ahead to an Exciting 2026

Our next pod­cast episode is live! This week, we sit down with Tomo­hi­ro Fukuza­wa, Founder and CEO of Sky­Drive, to reflect on a land­mark year for the Japan­ese eVTOL OEM and what’s next in 2026.

Tomo­hi­ro shares how 2025 marked a break­through year for Sky­Drive, with hun­dreds of suc­cess­ful flight tests, large-scale pub­lic demo flights and more than 400 pre-orders for its SD-05 air­craft.

A major high­light last year was show­cas­ing the air­craft at the World Expo in Osa­ka, where more than one mil­lion vis­i­tors saw the air­craft up close, many for the first time.

The con­ver­sa­tion dives into the tech­nol­o­gy behind SkyDrive’s com­pact, 12-rotor mul­ti­copter design, pur­pose-built for rooftop oper­a­tions and short urban hops, as well as its progress toward simul­ta­ne­ous cer­ti­fi­ca­tion with Japan’s JCAB and the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion.

Tomo­hi­ro also dis­cuss­es strate­gic part­ner­ships, includ­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with Suzu­ki and oper­a­tional part­ner­ships across Japan, South­east Asia, India, and the U.S. From alle­vi­at­ing traf­fic con­ges­tion in cities like Jakar­ta to trans­port­ing organs for urgent med­ical pro­ce­dures, the episode explores com­pelling real-world use cas­es that high­light the aircraft’s poten­tial impact.

Look­ing ahead, 2026 will focus on cer­ti­fi­ca­tion mile­stones, glob­al mar­ket expan­sion, and fur­ther pub­lic demon­stra­tion flights to accel­er­ate adop­tion.

Click on the Play but­ton below to lis­ten to the episode, which is also avail­able on whichev­er pod­cast plat­form you use.