The Future is Now: A ‘Flying Car’ With a Person On-Board Has Finally Taken Off the Ground

New Delhi: There are plenty of flying car projects that are in motion around the world but it still seems like a distant dream for human civilization. However, we might be a step closer to actually execute the dream.

A Japanese company has finally built a car that not only managed to take off but did so with a human sitting inside.Japan’s SkyDrive Inc. has carried out a successful though modest test flight with a person sitting in the cabin of the car.

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,”.

“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.The advantage of a eVTOL, or “electric vertical takeoff and landing,” in comparison to airplanes and helicopters, is that they can offer quick point-to-point personal travel in principle.

Battery sizes, air traffic control and other infrastructure issues are among the many potential challenges to commercializing 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, no one is going to buy them. If they fly for 5 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,” Singh said in a telephone interview.

The SkyDrive project began as a volunteer project called Cartivator in 2012, with funding by top Japanese companies including automaker Toyota Motor Corp., electronics company Panasonic Corp. and video-game 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 ($37 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 auto industry with the Ford Model T.