Japan eager to be on board vertical take-off ‘flying cars’
All the flying car concepts, which are like drones big enough to hold humans, promise to be better than helicopters, which are expensive to maintain, noisy to fly and require trained pilots
Electric drones booked through smartphones pick people up from office rooftops, shortening travel time by hours, reducing the need for parking and clearing smog from the air.
This vision of the future is driving the Japanese government’s “flying car” project. Major carrier All Nippon Airways, electronics company NEC Corp and more than a dozen other companies and academic experts hope to have a road map for the plan ready by the year’s end.
“This is such a totally new sector [that] Japan has a good chance of not falling behind,” said Fumiaki Ebihara, the government official in charge of the project.
For now, nobody believes people are going to be zipping around in flying cars any time soon. Many hurdles remain, such as battery life, the need for regulations and of course safety concerns. But dozens of such projects are popping up around the world.
A flying car is defined as aircraft that is electric, or hybrid electric, with driverless capabilities, that can land and take off vertically, according to Ebihara.
These are often called EVtol, which stands for “electric vertical take-off and landing” aircraft. All the flying car concepts, which are like drones big enough to hold humans, promise to be better than helicopters, which are expensive to maintain, noisy to fly and require trained pilots, Ebihara and other proponents said.