SkyDrive confirms first manned flights of eVTOL prototype and announces new CTO

eVTOL devel­op­er Sky­Drive has entered the final stages of test­ing its pro­to­type air­craft, after com­plet­ing the first-ever manned flight tests in Japan.

The Tokyo-based com­pa­ny — estab­lished by mem­bers of the Carti­va­tor Group — first launched an unmanned out­door flight test in Decem­ber 2018 and con­duct­ed numer­ous tech­ni­cal ver­i­fi­ca­tions to con­firm the con­trol­la­bil­i­ty and flight sta­bil­i­ty of its test air­craft between Decem­ber 2019 and March 2020. 

It has simul­ta­ne­ous­ly unveiled lead­ing aero­space engi­neer Nobuo Kishi as its Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer, who will lead the devel­op­ment and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the prod­uct to take it to mar­ket in 2023. This will involve feed­ing back improve­ments to tech­ni­cal design that were picked up dur­ing the manned oper­a­tion of the air­craft. 

Mr Kishi has held top posts at Mit­subishi Air­craft Cor­po­ra­tion, and was Chief Engi­neer of the Mit­subishi Region­al Jet — the first domes­tic jet-engine pas­sen­ger plane.

He said: “Through­out my career span­ning four decades, I have gained con­sid­er­able expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge in type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, safe­ty ver­i­fi­ca­tion, project man­age­ment, and sys­tem inte­gra­tion. I will help Sky­Drive devel­op the fly­ing car and bring it to the mar­ket. 

“Togeth­er we will rev­o­lu­tionise the con­cept of air trans­port — ben­e­fit­ing both busi­ness­es and the lives of con­sumers. I would like to help take the indus­try for­ward by intro­duc­ing a lean devel­op­ment process, while ensur­ing the same degree of safe­ty as con­ven­tion­al air­craft, imple­ment­ing advanced com­po­nents, and employ­ing inno­v­a­tive mass pro­duc­tion process­es learned from var­i­ous indus­tri­al sec­tors.”

Sky­Drive plans to launch a demo flight of its eVTOL air­craft lat­er this year.