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THE DECADES-OLD dream of zipping around in the sky as simply as driving on roads may be becoming less illusory.
Japanese company SkyDrive, among the many “flying car” projects around the world, has carried out a successful though modest test flight with one person on board.
In a video shown to reporters, a contraption that looked like a motorcycle with propellers lifted several feet off the ground, and hovered in a netted area for four minutes.
Tomohiro Fukuzawa, who heads the SkyDrive effort, said he hopes “the flying car” can be made into a real-life product by 2023, but he acknowledged that making it safe was critical.
“Of the world’s more than 100 flying car projects, only a handful has succeeded with a person on board,” he told The Associated Press.
“I hope many people will want to ride it and feel safe.”
The machine so far can fly for just five to 10 minutes but if that can become 30 minutes, it will have more potential, including exports to places like China, Fukuzawa said.
Unlike aeroplanes and helicopters, evtol (electric vertical takeoff and landing) vehicles offer quick point-to-point personal travel, at least in principle.
They could do away with the hassle of airports and traffic jams and the cost of hiring pilots.
Battery sizes, air traffic control and other infrastructure issues are among the many potential challenges to commercialising them.
“Many things have to happen,” said Sanjiv Singh, professor at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, who co-founded Near Earth Autonomy, near Pittsburgh, which is also working on an evtol aircraft.
If they cost 10 million dollars, no-one is going to buy them. If they fly for five minutes, no-one is going to buy them. If they fall out of the sky every so often, no-one is going to buy them.
The SkyDrive project began humbly as a volunteer project called Cartivator in 2012, with funding by top Japanese companies including car manufacturer Toyota, electronics company Panasonic and videogame developer Bandai Namco.
A demonstration flight three years ago went poorly. But it has improved and the project recently received another round of funding, of 3.9 billion yen (€31 million), including from the Development Bank of Japan.
The Japanese government is bullish on “the Jetsons” vision, with a “road map” for business services by 2023, and expanded commercial use by the 2030s, stressing its potential for connecting remote areas and providing lifelines in disasters.
Experts compare the buzz over flying cars to the days when the aviation industry got started with the Wright Brothers and the car industry with the Ford Model T.
Lilium of Germany, Joby Aviation in California and Wisk, a joint venture between Boeing and Kitty Hawk, are also working on evtol projects.
Sebastian Thrun, chief executive of Kitty Hawk, said it took time for aeroplanes, mobile phones and self-driving cars to win acceptance.
“But the time between technology and social adoption might be more compressed for evtol vehicles,” he said.
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It was outrageous boys were excluded in the first place. Glad to see it put right.
@izotope: check out the group regret first.
@Robert Nugent: is that a band?
@Mark: no mark, it’s a victims group.
Jonathan Irwin, founder of Jack & Jill charity for sick children, explains how the Gardasil HPV vaccine has injured his daughter, and how the health services in Ireland have done nothing to help.
I’m not anti vaccine, however people should know all the facts. Like the swine flu vaccine which destroyed so many lives. Read the manufactures declarations.
@Robert Nugent: Show me the scientifically proven, peer reviewed facts please. This anti-vax nonsense has to be shown to be the nonsense it is.Correlation does not equal causation
@An bhearna: just read the manufactures declarations on the vaccine and make your own decision.
@Robert Nugent: So “here’s our ass-covering legal mumbo jumbo” means more to you than actual scientific evidence? Says a lot about how you think medicine works.
@An bhearna: @Robert Nugent: Autoimmunity is poorly understood. There are some studies showing increases in autoimmune diseases after some vaccines. Then again catching viruses can also trigger autoimmune diseases.
@John Murphy: Poorly understood? Not that poorly when it comes to smallpox, measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, yellow fever, typhus, tetanus, etc, etc, etc. Understood enough to save millions of lives.
Let’s hear what Gemma O’Doherty has to say on this first – I understand she is quite the expert in this area.
@Diarmaid Mac Aonghusa: I hope you mean that ironically.
Why is this even discussed? It’s a pretty obvious and beneficial health measure.
@George Salter: Since when has discussing important issues become such a taboo?
Fantastic news. This will go some way to undoing some of the damage conspiracy theorists and sexual moralists have wreaked putting our daughters at risk.
Great news. And about time.
Good news, but it should have been giving to boys at the same time as girls. Supposedly, transmission rates of HPV from women to men is much higher than the other way around.
@Lisa Saputo: and also men to men is a big issue for the risk of anal cancer.
@Lisa Saputo: Agreed, and delighted to see boys are eligible to get it now. I always thought it was a cheap move to leave the lads out. Glad to see that Ireland can afford to treat them equally next year :-)
What will the antivax brigade say when there isn’t a huge spike in vaccine injured boys after the roll out?
Although knowing them, theyll find ‘evidence’ somewhere.
@FlyingDogThing:
I’m not saying that the Regret group is right but being skeptical about the HPV vaccine shouldn’t be put on the same level as being opposed to the MMR vaccine because measles, mumps and rubella are much more contagious than HPV, which is a sexually-transmitted infection.
@Ciarán Masterson: The results of the study linking the MME vaccine to autism were faked though.
@Ciarán Masterson: it’s still incredibly contagious. As far as I know, somewhere around 80% of sexually active people have had it, even if it hasn’t resulted in cancer in most of them. So it’s not your run of the mill STI, it’s a massively contagious and widespread one with an extremely high success rate at transmitting from person to person.
Don’t forget the parents in the Regret group have their girls the vaccine….. They were not anti vax
I’m not anti vaccination but I’m very cautious of the HPV vax… Look into Regret.ie some very sad cases of young women and the side effects connected to the uptake of HPV vaccine!!!
@Marc Quinn: the side effects are still probably better than cancer
@Y U no spell good?: I’m sure the young women affected by this will be relieved….. Probably!!!
My Doctor just wrote a prescription for this Gardasil I’m a male 31 years old. He told me it’s good for up to age 45, not sure if my insurance will fully cover it. If not it’s $600 max (currently living in Canada). Wondering if it’s worth getting at my age now have never heard anyone over 18 getting the vaccine.
@Pádraíg O’hEidhin: I got the full three doses of gardasil 9 last year at the age of 31. My insurance covered so i thought feck it why not? Also living in Canada. Doc told me same thing. It’s good til 45 and fair play for getting it.
@Pádraíg O’hEidhin: the 4 vaccine was extends to men under 45 last month. I got it free at the ID clinic, University Hospital Limerick.
when I got an STD test I asked about HPV was told they don’t bother testing for it as it is so common
Grear news!
The vast majority of those campaigning against this vaccination are not genuinely concerned about side effects, they’re right wing authoritarians who privately believe that getting an STI and even possibly dying of cancer is a good “deterrent” from the “sin” of teenagers engaging in sexual activity with their peers outside marriage. The likes of Fidelma “Fornication” Healy Eames’ involvement in the regret campaign should tell people all they need to know – this has nothing to do with health and everything to do with trying to turn back the tide on sexual liberation.
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