Toyota is preparing a flying car and hopes to light the Olympic flame with it Tokio the 2020.
"Cartivator," a team of about 30 engineers, including some new to age employees in Toyota, started developing from 2014 a flying car with the name "SkyDrive".
Cartivator head Tsubasa Nakamura said that although the car is still at an early stage of development, the team expects to carry out the first manned flight around the end of 2018.
On Saturday, the team presented an original model, which was able to make a flight for a few seconds. Nakamura said the model needs more stability so the prototype is able to fly away and high enough to reach the Olympic flame.
Cartivator's engineers are aiming to build the world's smallest electric vehicle, which can be used in small urban areas, hoping to market this 2025 car.
Companies around the world are competing to develop the first vertical takeoff and landing flying car. Uber Technologies Inc has already announced its plans to develop a flying service taxi in 2020 in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, and Dubai areas. The Airbus team is also working on developing a flying car.
In short, the time is not far when we will see, in addition to unmanned conventional cars on the roads, and unmanned flying vehicles in the air. Problems that will arise and concern the legislative layout flights over the cities we believe will be easily resolved in favor of the big companies.