Flying vehicles are starting to become the next trend for investors all over the world and Toyota has decided to join the movement. The Skydrive project was conceived back in 2012, when Tsubasa Nakamura and a group of friends won a competition with a flying vehicle concept dubbed Cartivator.
The same team began the development of the Skydrive in 2014 and the project has been gaining support and funding to help test out the proof of concept. Toyota has now given their full support for the creation of a full-scale prototype that will be developed for a manned test flight. Cartivator hopes that a working prototype will be ready by 2020 so that the Skydrive will light up the Olympic games flame in Tokyo.
Skydrive will measure at 2.9 meters long, 1.3 meters wide and 1.1 meters high. These tiny measurements make the Skydrive smallest flying car in the world. The team behind the projects promises a flight speed of 100 km/h and a driving speed of 150 km/h. This flying vehicle will be equipped with common drone technology like rotor blades that can vary the speed to change travel direction. It will hover 10 meters over the ground and will be classified as a VTOL aircraft.
Whether this will become a reality remains a question, but the support of Toyota certainly means that things have gotten serious.
